# CPT 76536

> Medicare paid $118.01 for CPT 76536 in the office (non-facility) setting and $118.01 in a facility under the Q3 2020 Physician Fee Schedule, effective July 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 increased 0.8%.

## What it is

A real-time ultrasound of the soft tissues of the neck and head, with images saved to the record. In practice this most often means the thyroid gland, but the same code covers the parathyroid glands, the salivary glands, and lumps or lymph nodes in the neck. Ultrasound is the first-line tool here because it distinguishes a solid nodule from a fluid-filled cyst without radiation and can guide a needle biopsy if one is needed.

## Selected release

- Release: Q3 2020 (2020 C)
- Effective: July 1 – September 30, 2020
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $118.01
- Facility national allowed amount: $118.01
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 0.56
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 2.67
- Facility practice expense RVU: 2.67
- Malpractice RVU: 0.04
- 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 (Q3 2020)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/files/zip/rvu20c-updated-06192020.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU20_V0618.csv, row 13,092
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/76536/2020/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/76536/2020/C
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:09:46+00:00