Surgery: 15.03× the Insurer's Own Benchmark
In the last quarter of 2025 the median prevailing offer in surgery disputes was 15.03× the qualifying payment amount — the figure the plan itself calculated. Across the second half of 2025, certified IDR entities decided 109,221 payment determinations in this category, covering 128,450 items or services.
What the Federal Data Says About Surgery
How to read this. The qualifying payment amount is the plan's own calculated benchmark — generally the median contracted rate for the service in the geographic area. A median prevailing offer of 15.03× QPA means that in half of the decided disputes in this category, the offer the certified IDR entity selected was at least 15.03 times what the plan had calculated. It is a measure of the gap between the plan's benchmark and what an independent entity found defensible. It is not a prediction, a guarantee, or an average recovery for any particular practice, and it does not include disputes that were found ineligible or that closed before a determination. CPT range for this category: 10004–69990 (surgical procedures across all body systems).
Source: CMS, Federal Independent Dispute Resolution Process — Supplemental Tables, Q3 and Q4 2025, Table 14 (prevailing offers relative to QPA by specialty) and Table 12 (payment determination outcomes). Published by CMS here.
Why Surgery Claims End Up Out of Network
Surgical claims reach federal arbitration by two different routes, and knowing which one applies to a given claim decides whether it is disputable at all.
The first is the assistant or co-surgeon a patient never chose, operating at an in-network facility. That is an ancillary service under the statute: no balance billing, no consent exception, and therefore federal IDR as the only avenue.
The second is the out-of-network surgeon performing non-emergency care at an in-network facility. Here the notice-and-consent exception can apply — but only if the notice met the statutory form and timing requirements. If it did not, the claim falls under the protections and is eligible for the federal process.
Surgery shows one of the widest gaps between the plan's benchmark and the prevailing offer in the federal data, which is consistent with the difficulty of pricing operative work from a claims database.
Deciding Whether a Claim Is Worth Disputing
Three things determine whether a specific claim belongs in federal arbitration, and none of them is the specialty itself.
1. Is the claim eligible?
Roughly one in five disputes initiated in 2025 was found ineligible — the single largest source of wasted effort in this process. Eligibility turns on whether the item or service falls under the federal protections rather than a state process, whether open negotiation ran its full 30 business days, and whether the dispute was filed within the four-business-day window that follows. Getting this wrong costs the fee and the claim.
2. Does the arithmetic work?
Since June 11, 2026, the administrative fee is $15 per party per dispute, down from $115. The certified IDR entity fee is set within a range published annually by the Departments and is paid by the non-prevailing party. Against those costs, the relevant question is the gap between the plan's payment and a defensible value for the service — and the federal data shows that gap by claim size is largest on smaller claims, not larger ones.
3. Can the claims be batched?
Qualifying claims may be submitted together in a single dispute. For a surgery practice generating similar claims against the same plan, batching is usually what turns a marginal economic case into a clear one.
We review claims against these three tests before anything is filed, and we are paid only out of what is actually recovered. If the claims do not clear the tests, we say so.