Elbow MRI Cost: Tennis Elbow, UCL & MR Arthrogram Prices 2026

Elbow MRI is a focused, relatively quick scan that drives a lot of sports-medicine and orthopaedic referrals, particularly in throwing athletes and racquet-sport players. UK private prices start at £249, Vista Health's flat national rate. US prices span $400 at a freestanding imaging centre to $4,500 at a hospital outpatient department for the identical scan code.

What an elbow MRI shows

The elbow joint is the articulation between the humerus, ulna and radius, surrounded by an extensive complex of ligaments (notably the ulnar and radial collateral ligaments), tendons (common flexor and extensor origins, distal biceps, distal triceps), and nerves (ulnar nerve at the cubital tunnel, radial nerve in the radial tunnel, median nerve crossing the joint). Per Radiopaedia's elbow MRI protocol article, standard non-contrast protocol uses sagittal, coronal and axial T1 plus fat-saturated PD sequences.

The radiologist reports on tendon integrity (with attention to common-extensor-origin pathology for tennis elbow and common-flexor-origin pathology for golfer's elbow), ligament integrity (especially UCL for throwers), articular-surface cartilage, any osteochondral lesions, loose bodies in the joint, ulnar-nerve cross-sectional area at the cubital tunnel, and bone-marrow signal in the distal humerus and proximal radius and ulna.

MR arthrogram changes what is visible by distending the joint capsule with dilute gadolinium, which makes partial-thickness UCL tears, intra-articular loose bodies, and subtle osteochondral lesions much easier to detect. For the population of throwing athletes (baseball pitchers, cricket bowlers, javelin throwers) considered for surgical UCL reconstruction (Tommy John surgery), MR arthrogram is essentially standard pre-operative workup.

UK elbow MRI pricing

UK private elbow MRI without contrast, verified June 2026: Vista Health charges a flat national rate for any single body part, £249 off-peak or £360 standard (£380 fast-track), report included; Scan.com's end-to-end package starts at £305 including the clinical referral. Hospital groups (Nuffield, Spire, Bupa) and Welbeck (formerly OneWelbeck) price per hospital or on enquiry. Self-referral is accepted at Vista Health and Scan.com; the hospital groups and Welbeck require a referral.

MR arthrogram of the elbow is more specialised and is offered at fewer centres. The only published UK national price is Vista Health's fixed £795 for an MR arthrogram (vista-health.co.uk, June 2026); Nuffield, Spire and Welbeck quote the procedure individually per hospital. The injection portion requires an experienced musculoskeletal radiologist or sports physician.

For UK NHS patients, elbow MRI is free with referral. Routine waits run 6 to 18 weeks. Throwing-athlete UCL workups are usually expedited through sports-medicine or orthopaedic upper-limb clinics, which may have shorter wait pathways.

US elbow MRI pricing

An elbow MRI is billed as CPT 73221, upper-extremity joint without contrast. Two kinds of price for that code are actually published. On the freestanding side, RadiologyAssist lists $265 all-inclusive for an MRI without contrast on its national rate card and puts its median cost per MRI at $301. On the hospital side, we parsed the federal price files of all 53 reachable New Jersey hospitals: for 73221 the published cash price runs from $264 at Newton Medical Center to $1,798 at Cooper University Hospital, with a median of $309 among the hospitals that discount at all. Eight hospitals publish their chargemaster unchanged and call it a cash price, and at the top of that group Capital Health Regional lists $16,641 for the same code.

So the number that decides your bill is which building the order goes to, not the scan. If you have insurance, what you pay is your remaining deductible and then your coinsurance against a negotiated rate that nobody publishes: ask your insurer for the allowed amount at each facility before you book, because both can be in network and be paid on entirely different fee schedules.

For US baseball pitchers and other throwing athletes, elbow MR arthrogram for UCL evaluation is commonly part of pre-surgical workup before Tommy John reconstruction. An arthrogram is a separate, more expensive procedure than a plain elbow MRI because it adds an image-guided joint injection billed on its own code. No US operator we checked publishes a bundled cash price for it, so we quote none: ask for the all-in cash price naming both the injection and the MRI, and get it in writing before you book.

Sources used on this page

• CMS Physician Fee Schedule, 2026
• Our own parse of the federal standard-charge files (45 CFR 180) of all 53 reachable New Jersey hospitals, CPT 73221; files dated 31 December 2025 to 2 September 2026, collected 16 September 2026 (hospital-by-hospital working)
• RadiologyAssist published rate card ($265 MRI without contrast, median $301), checked 16 September 2026
• Radiopaedia elbow MRI protocol
• ACR Appropriateness Criteria, chronic elbow pain
• Vista Health published national pricing (vista-health.co.uk) and Scan.com package pricing (uk.scan.com), verified June 2026; Nuffield, Spire, Bupa and Welbeck price per hospital or on enquiry

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