RVU to dollars: what is an RVU worth in 2026?
Nationally, one RVU is worth the conversion factor — $33.4009 in the Q3 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule release, effective July 2026. Multiply your RVUs by it below for a rough national estimate. For a real locality, the number has to come from the code.
1 RVU × $33.4009
Geographic adjustment applies per RVU component — work, practice expense, and malpractice each have their own GPCI — so a total that has already been summed can't be made locality-accurate. This figure is the national baseline only.
Get the exact number for your codeReading this estimate
- It's national. All three GPCIs are 1.000. Your locality's are not, and they don't move together.
- It's an allowed amount, not a payment. Medicare pays 80% of the allowed amount and the patient owes 20%; sequestration trims about 2% off Medicare's share.
- Work RVUs alone aren't a compensation rate. The conversion factor prices a whole code — work, practice expense, and malpractice together. A per-wRVU compensation rate is negotiated, and is a different number for a different purpose.
Why generic RVU converters mislead
To adjust a raw RVU total for a locality, a converter has to assume how that total splits across work, practice expense, and malpractice — usually a fixed blend of about 50/45/5 — because a locality has three GPCIs, not one, and a summed total gives it nothing to apply them to.
The split isn't fixed. It's a property of the code. An office visit is mostly clinician work; an in-office procedure is mostly the cost of running the room. The same blend flatters one and shortchanges the other, in the same locality, on the same day.
Here is the size of it, computed from the Q3 2026 release in MIAMI (FL) — the locality whose three GPCIs sit furthest apart (work 1.000, PE 1.041, MP 2.529, which a 50/45/5 blend collapses to a single 1.095):
| Code | Work / PE / MP RVU | Per component | 50/45/5 blend | Off by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 36430 0% work | 0.00 / 1.39 / 0.03 | $50.86 | $51.93 | +$1.07 +2.1% |
| 90847 87% work | 2.86 / 0.40 / 0.02 | $111.12 | $119.95 | +$8.83 +7.9% |
Same conversion factor, same RVUs, non-facility setting. The only difference is whether the geographic adjustment was applied per component — the way the payment formula works — or through one blended index. Per claim line the gap is small; across a book of claims it is a systematic error in a known direction, which is exactly the kind that survives a spot check.
What we do instead
Every per-code amount on this site is computed from that code's own work, practice expense, and malpractice RVUs in the CMS relative value file, the three GPCIs CMS publishes for the locality, and the conversion factor from the release in effect on the date of service. Nothing is blended, and nothing is averaged across codes.
Releases are immutable and versioned by quarter, and every result names the release that answered it — so a figure you put in an appeal can be reproduced months later instead of silently re-pricing itself when CMS publishes the next quarter. Where the fee schedule leaves an RVU blank, we say the amount is unavailable and why; we never render a blank as $0.
Open the expected-payment calculator, or read the full methodology.
Common questions
How much is 1 RVU worth in 2026?
Nationally, one relative value unit is worth the conversion factor: $33.4009 under the Q3 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. That figure assumes geographic indexes of 1.000. It is also an allowed amount, not a payment — Medicare pays 80% of it and the patient owes the other 20%.
What is the Medicare conversion factor?
It is the single dollar multiplier CMS sets to turn relative value units into payment. Every code in a release shares the same conversion factor; what differs between codes is the RVUs. For the Q3 2026 release it is $33.4009. That is the standard (non-QP) figure. CY2026 also carries a separate, higher conversion factor of $33.5675 for clinicians who qualify as Advanced APM participants — which one applies depends on the clinician, not on the code.
Why do RVU-to-dollar estimates vary by locality?
Because the geographic adjustment is not one number. Each payment locality has three geographic practice cost indexes (GPCIs) — one for work, one for practice expense, one for malpractice — and CMS applies each to its matching RVU component before multiplying by the conversion factor. A raw RVU total has already lost that breakdown, so no estimate built from it can be locality-accurate. Collapsing the three indexes into one blended figure in MIAMI (FL) moves HCPCS 90847 by $8.83 (7.9%) against the amount computed from its own components.
Is a work RVU worth the conversion factor too?
No, and this is the most common way an RVU estimate goes wrong. The conversion factor prices a whole code — work plus practice expense plus malpractice together. Multiplying work RVUs alone by $33.4009 understates the code and has nothing to do with a compensation rate: employment agreements that pay per work RVU set their own negotiated dollars-per-wRVU, which is a different number for a different purpose.
Does this estimate include sequestration?
No. It is the allowed amount before the 80/20 split and before the roughly 2% sequestration reduction, which applies to Medicare's 80% share rather than to the whole allowed amount. The per-code calculator applies both and shows each line.
How do I get the exact Medicare amount for a code?
Start from the code rather than from an RVU total. Enter the CPT or HCPCS code, date of service, locality, and place of service in the expected-payment calculator and it computes the amount from that code's own work, practice expense, and malpractice RVUs, the locality's three GPCIs, and the conversion factor in effect — and tells you which release answered.
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