# CPT 74230

> Medicare paid $131.40 for CPT 74230 in the office (non-facility) setting and $131.40 in a facility under the Q4 2018 Physician Fee Schedule, effective October 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 1.4%.

## What it is

A moving X-ray study of swallowing, in which the patient sips and eats barium-coated food and liquid of varying thickness while the throat and upper esophagus are filmed in real time. Because it is recorded as video rather than still pictures, it shows the mechanics of each swallow: whether the airway closes properly, where material lingers, and whether any of it goes down the wrong way. It is often called a modified barium swallow and is usually done with a speech-language pathologist present.

## Selected release

- Release: Q4 2018 (2018 D)
- Effective: October 1 – December 31, 2018
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $131.40
- Facility national allowed amount: $131.40
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 0.53
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 3.08
- Facility practice expense RVU: 3.08
- Malpractice RVU: 0.04
- 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 (Q4 2018)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicare-fee-for-service-payment/physicianfeesched/downloads/rvu18d.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU18_OCT.csv, row 12,185
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/74230/2018/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/74230/2018/D
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:08:37+00:00