# CPT 73221

> Medicare paid $233.50 for CPT 73221 in the office (non-facility) setting and $233.50 in a facility under the Q4 2020 Physician Fee Schedule, effective October 2020. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2020, when it decreased 1.4%.

## What it is

An MRI of one joint in the arm - most often the shoulder, but also the elbow or wrist - performed with no injected contrast dye. Unlike an X-ray, it shows the soft tissues: tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and the fluid inside the joint. This plain version is the standard first choice; matching codes cover the same joint scanned with dye, or scanned both ways.

## Selected release

- Release: Q4 2020 (2020 D)
- Effective: October 1 – December 31, 2020
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $233.50
- Facility national allowed amount: $233.50
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 1.35
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 5.02
- Facility practice expense RVU: 5.02
- Malpractice RVU: 0.10
- Conversion factor: 36.0896
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q4 2020)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/files/zip/rvu20d-updated-11232020.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU20_OCT.csv, row 12,554
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/73221/2020/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/73221/2020/D
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:10:00+00:00