Hip MRI Cost: Hip Joint Scan Prices in 2026

Hip MRI is commonly ordered for suspected labral tears, femoroacetabular impingement, avascular necrosis and occult fracture. UK private prices start at £249, Vista Health's flat national rate for any single body part; hospital groups quote per hospital. US prices span $450 at an independent centre to $5,000 at a hospital outpatient department. MR arthrogram, often used for hip labral evaluation, is a separate bundled procedure.

What hip MRI actually scans, and why pricing varies

Hip MRI imaging uses CPT 73721 (without contrast), 73722 (with IV contrast), 73723 (with and without), and 73722 with code 27093 (image-guided arthrogram injection) when MR arthrogram is performed. The 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule national average for CPT 73721 at a non-facility setting is roughly $237 for the global service per the CMS Physician Fee Schedule lookup. MR arthrogram is billed as the arthrogram-injection code plus the MRI code, which is why the patient bill is higher.

Standard non-contrast hip MRI takes 25 to 35 minutes scanner time. With-contrast adds 10 to 15 minutes. MR arthrogram adds 30 to 45 minutes for the injection procedure (including image guidance and post-injection wait). Most UK private clinics quote MR arthrogram as a single bundled price; US billing splits the components.

An important note for athletic patients: bilateral hip MRI (both hips, one appointment) is commonly ordered when the suspected pathology is bilateral or when the contralateral hip is being scanned as a comparison baseline. Bilateral hip MRI costs roughly 1.5x to 1.8x a single-hip scan, both UK and US, because protocol time scales sub-linearly when both joints can be scanned in the same patient session.

UK hip MRI pricing

UK private hip 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 hip is offered at most regional MSK-specialist centres and at the London musculoskeletal-imaging providers. 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 procedure requires a radiologist or sports physician to perform the joint injection under fluoroscopy or ultrasound guidance immediately before the MRI scan.

For patients with private medical insurance, the full MR arthrogram is usually covered after any policy excess, provided a consultant orthopaedic surgeon or sports physician has authorised the referral. Some policies require approval of the arthrogram procedure separately from the MRI, so it is worth checking with the insurer before booking if you want the cost on the insurance rather than on yourself.

US hip MRI pricing

A hip MRI without contrast is CPT 73721, the lower-extremity joint code it shares with knee, ankle and foot. Two published prices bracket the market. On the freestanding side, RadiologyAssist lists $265 all-inclusive for an MRI without contrast nationally and publishes city rate cards in the high $200s (Fort Worth $279.38, Dallas $300 flat). On the hospital side, we parsed the federal price files of all 53 reachable New Jersey hospitals: for 73721 the published cash price runs from $264 at Newton Medical Center to $2,904 at Cooper University Hospital, median $309 among the hospitals that discount at all, and up to $15,487 at Capital Health Regional, which republishes its chargemaster unchanged as its cash price.

If you have commercial insurance, what you pay is your remaining deductible and then your coinsurance against a negotiated rate nobody publishes. Ask your insurer for the allowed amount at each specific facility: a hospital outpatient department and a freestanding centre can both be in network and be paid on entirely different fee schedules, which is why the site you choose still changes your bill. Medicare's own published rates show the shape of it, valuing a brain MRI at $438 in a hospital outpatient department against $322 at an ambulatory surgical centre.

MR arthrogram in the US is billed as the arthrogram-injection code (27093 with fluoroscopic guidance, or 27093 plus 77002 or 76942 depending on guidance modality) plus the MRI code (73722). It is a genuinely more expensive procedure than a plain hip MRI because of the injection and the guidance. No US operator we checked publishes a bundled cash price for it, so we quote none: ask for the all-in cash price naming the injection, the guidance 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 73721; files dated 31 December 2025 to 2 September 2026, collected 16 September 2026 (hospital-by-hospital working)
• RadiologyAssist national and city rate cards, checked 16 September 2026
• Medicare Procedure Price Lookup, checked 16 September 2026
• Radiopaedia hip MRI protocol
• ACR Appropriateness Criteria, chronic hip 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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