wRVU & Medicare Fee Calculator

How the math works

Every code on the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule carries three relative value units: work (the physician's time, skill, and intensity), practice expense (staff, rent, supplies, equipment), and malpractice (professional liability cost). Medicare adjusts each component for local costs using geographic practice cost indices (GPCIs), sums them, and multiplies by the national conversion factor:

Payment = (wRVU × GPCI_work + peRVU × GPCI_pe + mpRVU × GPCI_mp) × CF

For 2026 the standard conversion factor is $33.4009, and $33.5675 for clinicians in qualifying alternative payment models. The practice expense component differs by site of service: non-facility (office) values are usually higher because the practice bears the overhead; facility values apply in hospitals and ASCs, where the facility bills separately for its costs. The work RVU is identical in both settings, which is why productivity compensation is measured in wRVUs.

Why surgeons track wRVUs

Most employed orthopedic and spine surgeons are paid on productivity: a contracted dollar rate per wRVU, often benchmarked against MGMA or AMGA survey percentiles. Knowing the wRVU value of a clinic template or an OR day, before the schedule is built, is how groups spot underfilled blocks and how surgeons sanity-check a compensation offer. The 2026 orthopedic wRVU table lists common procedures side by side, and the orthopedic CPT reference adds global periods and payment context.

The schedule only pays if the phone gets answered

A worksheet full of 19-wRVU joint replacements starts as a phone call: a referral, a new-patient request, an after-hours question that either books or disappears. ClinicFlow's voice AI answers every call 24/7, books directly into the EMR, and routes urgent clinical calls to the on-call surgeon, so the case mix you just priced actually materializes. The missed-call calculator estimates what unanswered lines cost in exactly these wRVU terms.

Frequently asked questions

What is a wRVU?

A work relative value unit (wRVU) is the component of a CPT code's total RVU that measures physician work: the time, skill, effort, and stress involved in performing the service. CMS assigns wRVUs to each code in the Physician Fee Schedule, and most productivity-based physician compensation plans pay a dollar rate per wRVU generated.

How is Medicare payment calculated from RVUs?

Medicare multiplies each of the three RVU components (work, practice expense, malpractice) by its geographic practice cost index (GPCI) for the locality, sums them, and multiplies by the annual conversion factor. For 2026 the standard conversion factor is $33.4009, and $33.5675 for qualifying APM participants.

What is the difference between facility and non-facility RVUs?

The practice expense RVU differs by setting. Non-facility values apply when the service is performed in a physician office, where the practice bears overhead costs, and are usually higher. Facility values apply in hospitals and ASCs, where the facility bills its own overhead separately. The work RVU is the same in both settings.

Where does this calculator's data come from?

All numeric values come from the CMS National Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value File, July 2026 release (RVU26C), and the CY 2026 GPCI addendum, which are public data published by CMS. The tool does not reproduce CPT code descriptors, which are copyrighted by the American Medical Association.