# CPT 70491

> Medicare paid $204.12 for CPT 70491 in the office (non-facility) setting and $204.12 in a facility under the Q3 2021 Physician Fee Schedule, effective July 2021. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2021, when it decreased 0.8%.

## What it is

A CT scan of the soft structures of the neck - throat, voice box, salivary glands, thyroid, and the chains of lymph nodes running down each side - performed after iodinated contrast is injected into a vein. The dye makes blood vessels and abnormal tissue stand out from normal muscle and fat, which is why the contrast version is ordered far more often than the plain one for neck complaints. Separate codes cover the same scan without contrast and the scan repeated both before and after contrast.

## Selected release

- Release: Q3 2021 (2021 C)
- Effective: July 1 – September 30, 2021
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $204.12
- Facility national allowed amount: $204.12
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 1.38
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 4.41
- Facility practice expense RVU: 4.41
- Malpractice RVU: 0.06
- Conversion factor: 34.8931
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q3 2021)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/files/zip/rvu21c-updated-6302021.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU21_JUL.csv, row 12,208
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/70491/2021/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/70491/2021/C
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:10:45+00:00