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Describe a service in plain words, or type a CPT/HCPCS code.

Serum Iron Level

CPT 83540

Ordered to work up anemia, suspected iron deficiency, or suspected iron overload.

No national payment amount

Status X is not separately payable under the PFS.

Did Medicare pay separately for CPT 83540 in Q1 2020?

Not at a published national rate. CPT 83540 carries status X (statutory exclusion) in the Q1 2020 release. The statutory definition of physician services does not include this item. Treat the blank amount as unpriced, not as $0.

Source: Physician relative value file (Q1 2020) · effective January 2020 · materially updated Aug 4, 2026 · compact facts

How often 83540 is billed

Across Original Medicare in CY2024, 83540 ranked #89 of the 7,879 CPT codes billed to Medicare that year, ranked by patients served or total allowed dollars. Patients who received it in 2024 were billed for it an average of 1.7 times that year — more than once per patient.

Beneficiaries
2.1M
Office + facility patients combined
Services
3.6M
Times it was billed
Allowed
$22.6M
Total Medicare allowed dollars
Compare: ↑ #87 more popular · 99497 ↓ #90 less popular · 66821

2024 Medicare fee-for-service only, national totals — Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial volume are excluded, so real-world use runs higher. This is a calendar-year snapshot from the CMS Physician & Other Practitioners dataset, on a different cycle from the Q1 2020 fee schedule the rates above come from.

Common questions

Why is there no payment amount for 83540?

Its status indicator is X (statutory exclusion). The statutory definition of physician services does not include this item. The blank is deliberate: the amount is either unknown or paid under another provision, so reading it as $0 would be wrong.

Why would a Medicare claim for 83540 be denied or paid less?

Each item below comes from a CMS indicator on this page — not general billing advice.

  • Its status indicator is X (statutory exclusion) — The statutory definition of physician services does not include this item. See status indicators

Payer-specific coverage and documentation rules live outside these files, so a claim that clears every check here can still be denied on other grounds.

When does this rate change?

CMS publishes a fee schedule release every quarter (January, April, July, October), and each is versioned here. See what changed each release, or get an email when a new release moves rates.

Sources: CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value Files.

Saw this code on your bill?

What is a 83540 visit in patient-friendly terms?

In plain terms: Measures the amount of iron actually circulating in the blood, essentially the iron currently riding on its transport protein. On its own the value is jumpy - it shifts with recent meals, supplements, and even the time of day - so it is almost never interpreted alone. Low results point toward iron deficiency, high results toward iron overload or a recent iron dose, and either way the number is read alongside iron-binding capacity and ferritin. Think of someone who has been tired and pale, whose blood count came back low, and whose doctor now needs to know whether iron is the reason. This is one of two or three tests usually drawn together to answer that. You'll typically see CPT 83540 on a bill or explanation of benefits (EOB) when a clinician performs or bills for this service.

Computation & policy

How this amount is computed

amount = (work RVU × work GPCI + PE RVU × PE GPCI + MP RVU × MP GPCI) × conversion factor. National amounts use GPCI = 1.000. To price an RVU figure of your own, use the RVU-to-dollars converter.

Release Q1 2020
Component RVU
Work RVU blank
Practice expense RVU (non-facility) blank
Practice expense RVU (facility) blank
Malpractice RVU blank

Every rate combines three parts: work (the clinician’s time, skill and effort), practice expense (office overhead — higher when the service is done in a doctor’s own office), and malpractice (the share of liability-insurance cost). A blank means CMS publishes no national number for that part. Read it as unknown, and never as zero.

History & related

Rate history by release

National non-facility amount for 83540 across quarterly releases.

Release Status Non-facility Facility
Q3 2026 Jun 30, 2026 – present X — —
Q2 2026 Mar 10, 2026 – Jun 29, 2026 X — —
Q1 2026 Dec 29, 2025 – Mar 9, 2026 X — —

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Source & method

Show sources

This is computed from CMS's Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Q1 2020 release (schedule pfs, effective January 2020). National amounts apply a GPCI of 1.000 and leave sequestration off. The status indicator decides payability, never the RVU values, so a blank RVU stays blank. Releases are immutable: a rate retrieved for a past quarter always reflects that release. Commercial and cash-pay figures anywhere on this page are arithmetic on the Medicare amount, using commonly cited reimbursement ranges. They're illustrative, and no nationwide claims database stands behind them. Our methodology covers all of this in depth — sourcing, parsing, versioning, and how claims are cross-checked before they ship.

Description written from primary sources: CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value Files. Not derived from AMA CPT descriptor text.

Physician relative value file (Q1 2020) · rvu20a-updated-01312020.zip (PPRRVU20_Jan.csv row 14,485)

Conversion factor $36.0896 read from the same file, row 11, column 25.

Use the (i) buttons next to each amount above for the exact row, columns, and math.

Cite this rate

This link keeps pointing at the Q1 2020 figures, even after a newer release lands.

CPT 83540 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule rate (Q1 2020). Localis. https://localishealth.com/cpt/83540/2020/A