What does a knee replacement cost?

There is no single number, and this page will not invent one.

The cost depends on four things. Where it is done. Who is paying. What your own plan makes you pay. And what happens in the three months after. Two people with the same knee and the same surgeon can get very different bills. The only estimate that applies to you comes from your insurer and the office. The end of this page explains how to get it.

What this page can do is explain what the number is made of, what moves it, and which parts you have any control over.

What is the bill actually made of?

Several bills, from several places.

A knee replacement produces a facility charge from the surgery center or hospital. It produces a surgeon’s fee and an anesthesia fee. The implant itself is usually folded into the facility’s number. After surgery come physical therapy visits, equipment such as a walker, and follow-up visits. A night in the hospital or a stay in a rehabilitation facility is a separate line, and often a large one.

For a rough sense of scale, Medicare data is the most open source. Medicare pays fixed amounts and publishes them. A 2020 analysis in The Journal of Arthroplasty used 2018 figures. The average Medicare hospital payment was about $11,760 for a knee replacement with a hospital stay. It was about $10,122 for one done as an outpatient. The surgeon’s payment averaged about $1,403 in both settings. Those are what Medicare paid. They are not what anyone was charged, and not what a commercial insurer pays. They are also several years old. Read them as proportions, not as your price.

The useful proportion is this: the surgeon’s fee is a small slice. The facility is most of it.

Why can’t I just look up the price?

Because the listed price is not the price anyone pays.

Since 2019, federal rules have required hospitals to post their prices online. Since 2021 the posting has to include the rates negotiated with each insurer. In 2022 two research groups checked how that was working for hip and knee replacement. Both looked at the 50 top-ranked orthopaedic hospitals in the country. One found that 44 of the 50 had posted a file. But finding a knee-replacement price inside it took billing codes, and the average listed charge ranged from $6,663 to $117,072 depending on how you searched. The other found usable prices at 36 of the 50. The differences between hospitals were only weakly explained by local costs.

In plain terms, the posted list price is where a hospital and an insurer start bargaining. Your plan’s negotiated rate is lower, usually by a lot. Your share of that rate is lower still. A number on a hospital website without your plan’s name next to it is almost never your number.

What makes the cost go up or down?

Four levers, and you hold two of them.

Where it is done. A 2025 meta-analysis pooled 12 prospective studies covering 2,470 patients. It compared joint replacements done as an outpatient against those done with a hospital stay. Readmissions and complications were no different. Costs were lower in the outpatient group. In this practice, approximately 90% of primary hip and knee replacements go home the same day. That is a candidacy decision made for each patient, not a promise. The outpatient joint replacement page explains how it is made.

How often the facility does this operation. A study of 288,909 Medicare claims from 2019 compared hospitals by volume. Hospitals doing 10 or fewer inpatient joint replacements a year had costs about 1.32 times those of hospitals doing more than 200. Patients at lower-volume hospitals also stayed longer and were less likely to go straight home. That is a finding about hospitals. It says nothing about any one surgeon.

Why the knee is being replaced. A first-time replacement for ordinary arthritis is the baseline. Replacing a knee after an earlier fracture, an earlier operation, or a failed implant costs more. It takes longer and needs more equipment. The revision knee replacement page covers that separate operation.

What happens in the three months after. This is the largest lever and the least discussed. A 2025 study followed 400,321 Medicare patients for two years after knee replacement. The most expensive 30 percent of patients accounted for 78 percent of all first-year spending. Going somewhere other than home after surgery cost 3.9 times as much as going home. About a third of the high-cost group had a complication.

A second 2025 study looked at more than a million Medicare hip and knee replacements. The operation itself was less than a third of total spending in the year around it. Rehabilitation stays, readmissions, and follow-up care made up the rest. All of them rose with frailty.

The two levers you hold are your health going in and your plan for going home. The RISE pages and the home preparation checklist cover both. Neither is a guarantee. They are the parts of the bill that are not fixed before you walk in.

How do I get the number that applies to me?

Call two places, in this order.

Your insurer first. Ask for an estimate for a total knee replacement, billing code 27447, at the facility where it would be done. Then ask four things. Are the surgeon, the facility, and the anesthesia group all in my network? What are my deductible and coinsurance, and how much of the deductible have I met this year? What is my out-of-pocket maximum? Is prior authorization required? Write down the reference number for the call.

Then the office. Dr. Patel works with most major insurance plans. Call the office to verify your specific plan, including Medicare. The office can confirm the facility, the codes, and the referral question at the same time. The insurance and referrals page lists what to have ready.

If you have Medicare, the Medicare website has a procedure price lookup. It shows national average costs and your typical share for the same operation in a hospital outpatient department and in a surgery center. It is a reasonable starting point, not a quote.

What this page cannot tell you

It cannot tell you what you will pay, and it does not try to.

It also cannot tell you whether a knee replacement is worth the cost for you. That depends on what the knee is taking from you. A replacement done too early buys very little, at any price. The second opinion article covers that evidence. The knee arthritis page covers the options that cost far less and stay open even when the X-ray looks bad.

Worth asking at the visit

• Which facility would this be done at, and is it in my network?
• Am I a candidate to go home the same day, and what would change that?
• What would make this a more complex operation than a standard first-time replacement?
• What should I do before surgery to lower the chance of a hospital stay or a rehab facility afterward?

The knee replacement page covers how the operation is performed and how candidacy is decided.