How we estimate costs

What the estimate is

For each procedure we show a typical cost range for the place you searched: the middle half of what practices publish, once differences in local price levels are taken into account. It is an estimate, and it is labelled as one wherever it appears. Beneath it on every cost page are the individual published prices it comes from, each with what it covers, where it came from and when we checked it.

Today, 14 procedures have a range, built from the published prices of 128 practices in 28 states. Every cost page says how many practices its own range comes from.

How it is worked out

1. Which prices count. Every price we have approved for the procedure that has not passed its stated expiry date — except a price for one part of the operation only, a price that says the surgeon’s fee, anesthesia or the facility is not included, and, for the procedure as a whole, prices for revision or “mini” versions of it, which are different operations.
2. One number per price. A single price is itself. A range is its midpoint. A “from” price is the amount it starts from.
3. One number per practice. A practice that lists several prices counts once, at the middle of its own prices. Two clinics that turn out to be one practice count once.
4. Local price levels taken out. Each practice’s number is divided by the price level where it is — its metropolitan area’s, or its state’s if the metro has none published — so that a Los Angeles price and a Knoxville price are compared like with like.
5. The national range. The 25th to 75th percentile of those numbers. We need at least 4 independent practices; with fewer there is no range, and the page shows the prices we have and says there are not enough yet.
6. Your area. The national range multiplied by the price level of the place you searched: its metropolitan area if it is in one, otherwise its state. A ZIP code or a city is placed in its metropolitan area, or its state if it is in none.
7. Rounding. To the nearest $100 below $10,000 and the nearest $500 above it — the low end down and the high end up, so rounding only ever widens the range.

Every range is recalculated whenever a price is approved, replaced, expires or is merged with another practice’s. We store each one with the method that produced it (currently rpp-p25p75-1), the year of price levels it used, and the exact prices that went into it, so any number we have shown can be reproduced.

Where local price levels come from

From the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Regional Price Parities, for 2024: the “all items” index for every state and metropolitan statistical area, where the national price level is 100. A metro at 113 is about 13% more expensive than the country as a whole, across everything people buy. It is a government statistic, and we use it exactly as published.

Where the prices come from

There are two ways, and every price says which. A price we read from a practice’s own website is labelled “Published on the practice’s own website” with the day we read the page. A price a practice told us directly is labelled “Confirmed by the practice on” the day they told us. Both go through the same checks and the same person.

Our crawler reads a site’s robots.txt first and does nothing the site refuses. It identifies itself as SurgeryComBot, makes at most one request every three seconds to any one site, follows links no more than 2 steps from where it started, reads at most 25 pages per site, and never leaves the site it began on. A person then types out what the page says — the amount, what it covers component by component, and the sentence that states it, which has to appear in the page word for word — and a second person approves it before it appears anywhere.

A practice can also claim its listing, proving it by email at its own web domain, and state its prices. That statement goes into the same queue and is approved the same way. Stating a price this way is free.

A price on a website is checked again monthly; one a practice gave us lapses 12 months after approval unless the practice confirms it again.

The published prices beneath the estimate

On the strip under each range we show only prices that can be compared directly: a single amount or a two-ended range, in US dollars, for an exact version of the operation, that says the surgeon’s fee, anesthesia and the facility (and implants, where they apply) are all included. “From” prices and prices for one part of the operation are shown in their own sections. When 12 or more practices in an area have a comparable price, we also say how many there are and the span from the lowest to the highest.

What this cannot tell you

• Published prices are what practices chose to publish. Practices that publish or confirm a price may price differently from those that don’t. Most practices publish nothing, so this is a sample of the ones that do, and it is not a random one.
• Price levels measure prices in general, not surgery. The Regional Price Parities cover everything people buy, housing included. Surgery prices may vary between places more or less than that.
• Your quote depends on your consultation. What you will pay depends on your anatomy, what you want done, the surgeon, the facility and the anesthesia — none of which a range can know. A quote below or above the typical range is not, by itself, a reason to trust or distrust it; what it covers matters more.
• It says nothing about how good anyone is, and it is not a recommendation.

Corrections

If a price of yours is here and it is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will check the page again. Every price carries the address it came from and the day we read it. Use the correction link on any surgeon’s profile, or write to us.