What Medicare actually pays for after foot or ankle surgery

Reviewed by Erin Rose — healthcare price-transparency analyst. Last checked August 29, 2026. Part of the full foot-and-ankle-surgery recovery checklist. No affiliate links on this page — every link below goes to a primary source or another page on this site.

Two mobility devices on this checklist do the identical job — keeping weight off a healing foot — and Medicare prices them completely differently. Crutches (E0114) are covered at $57.17-$88.73 with a prescription. A knee scooter and the iWALK hands-free crutch, both classified under E0118, pay $0, by rule, regardless of prescription. Beyond that contrast, Medicare pays for two more items on this checklist (a walker and a commode, both hospital-providable "if needed") and pays zero toward the shower chair, the leg cast cover, the EVENup shoe leveler, and the crutch pads.

Which recovery items does Medicare actually cover?

All three rows below trace to the same CMS data as the fact above. "Your share" is 20% of the fee — the coinsurance math is explained further down.

Policy citations: Canes and Crutches (A52459), Walkers (A52503), Commodes (A52461). Full DME MAC policy article links are in Sources below.

Why does E0114 matter more than the other 6 crutch codes?

Seven HCPCS codes cover crutches. One of them carries almost all the volume — checked directly against every row of data/coverage_status.json, not assumed:

E0114 (44,541 claims) outnumbers the other six crutch codes combined (1,411 claims) by about 31.6x — the standard aluminum push-button pair is what nearly everyone actually gets billed for.

Is crutches Medicare's single most-billed mobility item? No — here's the correction.

This hub's own Stage-1 research pass claimed E0114 was "the single highest-utilization code in the entire 68-code dataset." That claim was checked directly against all 68 rows of data/coverage_status.json for this page and found incorrect — E0114 actually ranks 14th. Five codes alone outbill it by a wide margin:

E0114's real, verified distinction is narrower and still true: it dominates the crutches family specifically (see the table above), and it's the one item on this checklist where Medicare pays something toward the same job a $0-covered knee scooter or iWALK also does.

What does Medicare not cover for foot-and-ankle mobility and bathroom equipment?

E0118 (the knee scooter and iWALK code) is described in its own DME MAC policy article (A52459, the same Canes and Crutches article behind the featured fact above) as "a device strapped to the lower leg with a platform or a device with wheels and a platform the beneficiary propels with their sound limb" — Medicare defines the category precisely, then pays nothing toward it. E0240 (bath/shower chair) is excluded by statute, the same bath-safety exclusion every other hub on this site has found.

What about the leg cast cover, the EVENup shoe leveler, and the crutch pads?

None of these are billed as DME either — there's no HCPCS code among the 68 this site tracks for a waterproof leg cast/boot shower cover or an EVENup shoe leveler. Crutch underarm pads are a partial exception: PDAC classifies them under A4635/A4636, a real accessory-code family, but one this site's 68-code coverage_status.json dataset was never built to track — an honest out-of-scope gap, not a covered-or-not-covered claim either way.

Do I need a prescription to get any of this paid?

Yes, and the order matters. Federal rule 84 Fed. Reg Vol 217 ("Final Rule 1713") requires two things before a supplier delivers a DME item: a face-to-face visit with your doctor, and a Written Order Prior to Delivery (WOPD) — a signed order on file before the item goes out the door, not a receipt collected afterward.

Does it matter where I buy it?

Yes — it's the difference between a claim Medicare pays and a claim that doesn't exist. Medicare only pays a supplier holding a DMEPOS supplier number issued by CMS (42 CFR § 424.57(b)(2)). Buy the identical crutches or walker from a pharmacy shelf or Amazon instead, and there's no Medicare claim to submit at all — the seller was never set up to bill Medicare. You need both a WOPD and an enrolled supplier for Medicare to pay anything.

How much do I actually pay out of pocket?

Two numbers stack: the annual Part B deductible, then 20% coinsurance on everything after that.

• The Part B deductible comes first. You pay 100% of your Part B costs — DME included — until you hit the annual deductible. For 2026, that's $283.
• Then 20% coinsurance applies. Medicare pays 80% of whichever is lower — the supplier's actual charge or the Medicare fee-schedule amount — and you owe the remaining 20% (42 CFR § 414.210(a)). That's the "your 20% share" column in the covered-items table above.

Both numbers assume a Medicare-enrolled supplier who accepts assignment. A supplier who doesn't can charge more than the fee-schedule amount for the same item.