What are the biggest IONM codes in federal IDR?

By 2025 dispute volume: somatosensory evoked potentials (95938, 55,067 disputes), remote monitoring supervision (95941), motor evoked potentials testing under 95939, EMG studies (95861), and intraoperative EEG (95955). Median decided awards ran $2,800 to $6,225 per line.

Which payers do IONM groups face most?

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas led with 43,852 disputes in 2025, followed by United Healthcare (28,371), other Blue Cross plans (22,487), and Cigna (13,082).

Is 34x really the median IONM award?

Yes, measured across decided line items in the 2025 public use files: the median award was about 34 times the qualifying payment amount. The driver is tiny QPAs, often $58 to $150 on monitoring codes, against awards in the thousands.

Answers / The IONM record

The IONM IDR record

CMS published 165,409 federal No Surprises Act IDR disputes with neurodiagnostics and IONM line items for 2025. Providers won 84.7 percent of decided disputes, the median award was about 34 times the qualifying payment amount across decided line items, among the highest of any specialty, and the median decision took 31 days.

A specialty the process fits unusually well

Neurodiagnostics and IONM generated 165,409 published disputes in 2025, remarkable volume for a field with a few hundred operating companies. The explanation is structural. Monitoring is furnished at facilities, almost always out of network, to patients who never select the monitorist, against payer benchmarks the awards say are not credible. Every element that makes a claim both protected and winnable is built into how the specialty works.

Code by code, the gap is extreme

Somatosensory evoked potentials (95938) led volume with 55,067 disputes: median QPA $58, median decided award $2,800, a 49x gap. Remote monitoring supervision (95941) ran a $371 QPA against a $5,325 median award. Intraoperative EEG (95955) ran $60 against $5,100, and neuromuscular junction testing (95937) ran $72 against $6,225, a 77x median multiple. EMG studies (95861) paid a median of $3,000. Win rates on all of these sat between 84 and 87 percent of decided disputes. No other specialty shows payer benchmarks this far from accepted awards across its entire top code list.

The payers on the other side

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas appeared in 43,852 of the 2025 disputes, the most of any payer, with United Healthcare at 28,371, other Blue Cross plans at 22,487, and Cigna at 13,082. The concentration mirrors where spine surgery volume and monitoring coverage overlap, and win rates held across all of them.

What the record means for offers

In baseball-style arbitration the arbitrator must pick one offer, and 165,409 published disputes are the honest reference for what offers win in this specialty. A monitoring group pricing an SSEP line has tens of thousands of published outcomes to anchor against, by code and payer. Lido IDR builds IONM offers from that record and files for a flat fee per arbitration; the data itself is explorable at idrexplorer.com.

Anchor your offers to the record

Lido IDR prices IONM offers from the published outcomes for your codes and payers, then files for a flat fee per arbitration. Talk to an IDR specialist.