A charge which falls within the range of charges most frequently used in a locality for a particular medical service or procedure. The top of this range establishes an over-all limitation on the charges which a carrier, which considers prevailing charges in reimbursement, will accept as reasonable for a given service, without adequate special justification. Current Medicare rules state that the limit of an area’s prevailing charge is to be the 75th percentile of the customary charges for a given service by the physicians in a given area. For example, if customary charges for an appendectomy in a locality were distributed so that 10 percent of the services were rendered by physicians whose customary charge was $150, 40 percent by physicians who charged $200, 40 percent who charged $250, and 10 percent who charged $300 or more, then the prevailing charge would $250, since this is the level that, under Medicare regulations, would cover at least 75 percent of the cases.