# CPT 72128

> Medicare paid $181.53 for CPT 72128 in the office (non-facility) setting and $181.53 in a facility under the Q3 2016 Physician Fee Schedule, effective July 2016. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2016, when it increased 0.2%.

## What it is

A CT scan of the twelve rib-bearing vertebrae of the mid back, taken without contrast dye and reformatted into multiple planes. It is chosen when the question is bony: is a vertebra fractured, how badly has it collapsed, has a cancer eaten into the bone. This is the least common of the three spinal CT regions, since mid-back problems are less frequent than neck and low back ones, and companion codes cover the same region with contrast.

## Selected release

- Release: Q3 2016 (2016 C)
- Effective: July 1 – September 30, 2016
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $181.53
- Facility national allowed amount: $181.53
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 1.00
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 4.00
- Facility practice expense RVU: 4.00
- Malpractice RVU: 0.07
- Conversion factor: 35.8043
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q3 2016)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicare-fee-for-service-payment/physicianfeesched/downloads/rvu16c.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU16_V0517.csv, row 11,481
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/72128/2016/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/72128/2016/C
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:06:56+00:00