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Describe a service in plain words, or type a CPT/HCPCS code.

Anesthesia for Upper GI Endoscopy

CPT 00731

Reported when an anesthesia professional, rather than the endoscopist, provides sedation for an upper GI endoscopy.

No national payment amount

Anesthesia code: paid via base + time units × a separate anesthesia conversion factor, not the standard PFS RVU formula. Supply a locality (and time_minutes for a specific amount) to compute it.

~$145.90 for a 30-minute example case in Dallas, TX

Source

Where this example comes from

(base_units + time_units) × anesthesia_cf × locality_adjuster

base_units
5
time_units
2
anesthesia_cf
20.81
locality_adjuster
1.0016
amount
$145.90

time_units = time_minutes / 15.

locality_adjuster = 0.787 × work_gpci + 0.147 × pe_gpci + 0.066 × mp_gpci.

Anesthesia has no single national rate — payment is (base units + time units) × the locality's anesthesia conversion factor, so the amount above is an example computed with Dallas, TX rates, before sequestration. Enter your ZIP for your own locality's number.

How much does Medicare pay for CPT 00731?

CPT 00731 is an anesthesia code, so Medicare has no single national rate: payment is (base units + time units) × the locality's anesthesia conversion factor — for example, about $145.90 for a 30-minute case in Dallas, TX under the Q2 2024 release, before sequestration.

Source: Physician relative value file (Q2 2024) · effective April 2024 · materially updated Aug 4, 2026 · compact facts

How often 00731 is billed

Across Original Medicare in CY2024, 00731 ranked #145 of the 7,879 CPT codes billed to Medicare that year, ranked by patients served or total allowed dollars. Patients who received it in 2024 were billed for it an average of 1.6 times that year — more than once per patient.

Beneficiaries
881,676
Office + facility patients combined
Services
1.4M
Times it was billed
Allowed
$143.9M
Total Medicare allowed dollars
Compare: ↑ #144 more popular · 93970 ↓ #146 less popular · 92557

2024 Medicare fee-for-service only, national totals — Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial volume are excluded, so real-world use runs higher. This is a calendar-year snapshot from the CMS Physician & Other Practitioners dataset, on a different cycle from the Q2 2024 fee schedule the rates above come from.

Common questions

Why is there no payment amount for 00731?

Its status indicator is J (anesthesia). Medicare prices this under the anesthesia formula — (base units + time units) × the locality anesthesia conversion factor — not the standard RVU formula. Ask for a locality to see that factor. The blank is deliberate: the amount is either unknown or paid under another provision, so reading it as $0 would be wrong.

When does this rate change?

CMS publishes a fee schedule release every quarter (January, April, July, October), and each is versioned here. See what changed each release, or get an email when a new release moves rates.

Sources: CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value Files.

Saw this code on your bill?

What is a 00731 visit in patient-friendly terms?

In plain terms: Anesthesia care during an endoscopy of the upper digestive tract, where a flexible camera is passed through the mouth to inspect the esophagus, stomach and the beginning of the small intestine. It covers routine upper endoscopy cases rather than the specialized bile-duct and pancreatic-duct work done with a side-viewing scope, which has its own anesthesia code. The anesthesia professional typically provides deep sedation or general anesthesia and manages a shared airway while the gastroenterologist works. Think of a patient with months of heartburn, difficulty swallowing or unexplained anemia who needs the stomach and esophagus looked at directly. Many of these exams are sedated by the endoscopy team itself, but when a patient is frail, has sleep apnea or serious heart or lung disease, a separate anesthesia clinician is brought in to handle the sedation and watch the airway. That clinician's service is this code. You'll typically see CPT 00731 on a bill or explanation of benefits (EOB) when a clinician performs or bills for this service.

Computation & policy

How this amount is computed

amount = (work RVU × work GPCI + PE RVU × PE GPCI + MP RVU × MP GPCI) × conversion factor. National amounts use GPCI = 1.000. To price an RVU figure of your own, use the RVU-to-dollars converter.

Release Q2 2024
Component RVU
Work RVU blank
Practice expense RVU (non-facility) blank
Practice expense RVU (facility) blank
Malpractice RVU blank

Every rate combines three parts: work (the clinician’s time, skill and effort), practice expense (office overhead — higher when the service is done in a doctor’s own office), and malpractice (the share of liability-insurance cost). A blank means CMS publishes no national number for that part. Read it as unknown, and never as zero.

History & related

Rate history by release

National non-facility amount for 00731 across quarterly releases.

Release Status Non-facility Facility
Q3 2026 Jun 30, 2026 – present J — —
Q2 2026 Mar 10, 2026 – Jun 29, 2026 J — —
Q1 2026 Dec 29, 2025 – Mar 9, 2026 J — —

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Source & method

Show sources

This is computed from CMS's Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Q2 2024 release (schedule pfs, effective April 2024). National amounts apply a GPCI of 1.000 and leave sequestration off. The status indicator decides payability, never the RVU values, so a blank RVU stays blank. Releases are immutable: a rate retrieved for a past quarter always reflects that release. Commercial and cash-pay figures anywhere on this page are arithmetic on the Medicare amount, using commonly cited reimbursement ranges. They're illustrative, and no nationwide claims database stands behind them. Our methodology covers all of this in depth — sourcing, parsing, versioning, and how claims are cross-checked before they ship.

Description written from primary sources: CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value Files. Not derived from AMA CPT descriptor text.

Physician relative value file (Q2 2024) · rvu24b-updated-03-18-2024.zip (PPRRVU24_APR.csv row 5,908)

Conversion factor $33.2875 read from the same file, row 11, column 25.

Use the (i) buttons next to each amount above for the exact row, columns, and math.

Cite this rate

This link keeps pointing at the Q2 2024 figures, even after a newer release lands.

CPT 00731 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule rate (Q2 2024). Localis. https://localishealth.com/cpt/00731/2024/B