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

Total Protein Measurement, Urine

CPT 84156

Ordered to detect or follow kidney disease, especially in people with diabetes or long-standing high blood pressure.

No national payment amount

Status X is not separately payable under the PFS.

Did Medicare pay separately for CPT 84156 in Q2 2018?

Not at a published national rate. CPT 84156 carries status X (statutory exclusion) in the Q2 2018 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 (Q2 2018) · effective April 2018 · materially updated Aug 4, 2026 · compact facts

How often 84156 is billed

Across Original Medicare in CY2024, 84156 ranked #207 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 1.9 times that year — more than once per patient.

Beneficiaries
734,667
Office + facility patients combined
Services
1.4M
Times it was billed
Allowed
$4.9M
Total Medicare allowed dollars
Compare: ↑ #206 more popular · 99443 ↓ #208 less popular · 99454

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 Q2 2018 fee schedule the rates above come from.

Common questions

Why is there no payment amount for 84156?

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 84156 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 84156 visit in patient-friendly terms?

In plain terms: Measures how much protein in total is present in a urine sample, reported either as a concentration or as a total amount across a timed collection. Healthy kidneys hold protein back in the bloodstream, so protein showing up in urine is a signal that the filtering units are leaking. This is the urine version of the total protein test - neighbouring codes cover the same measurement done on blood serum or on other body fluids. Think of being handed a jug and asked to collect all your urine for a full day, or giving a single cup at a diabetes follow-up. The lab is checking whether protein that belongs in your blood is spilling into your urine, which is one of the earliest warning signs of kidney trouble. You'll typically see CPT 84156 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 Q2 2018
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 84156 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 Q2 2018 release (schedule pfs, effective April 2018). 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 (Q2 2018) · rvu18b.zip (PPRRVU18_APR.csv row 14,050)

Conversion factor $35.9996 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 Q2 2018 figures, even after a newer release lands.

CPT 84156 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule rate (Q2 2018). Localis. https://localishealth.com/cpt/84156/2018/B