# CPT 72070

> Medicare paid $34.56 for CPT 72070 in the office (non-facility) setting and $34.56 in a facility under the Q3 2018 Physician Fee Schedule, effective July 2018. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2018, when it increased 0.3%.

## What it is

Plain X-rays of the twelve vertebrae of the mid back, the ones the ribs attach to, taken as a basic front and side pair. The side view is the one that matters most here, because it shows vertebral height and will reveal a compression fracture where the front of a bone has wedged down. Codes for larger studies of the same region cover the addition of further angles.

## Selected release

- Release: Q3 2018 (2018 C)
- Effective: July 1 – September 30, 2018
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $34.56
- Facility national allowed amount: $34.56
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 0.22
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 0.72
- Facility practice expense RVU: 0.72
- Malpractice RVU: 0.02
- Conversion factor: 35.9996
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q3 2018)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicare-fee-for-service-payment/physicianfeesched/downloads/rvu18c1.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU18_JUL.csv, row 11,772
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/72070/2018/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/72070/2018/C
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:08:27+00:00