Definitive Identification of Cultured Isolate
CPT 87077
Performed when a culture grows an organism whose exact identity matters for choosing therapy or for infection control.
No national payment amount
Status X is not separately payable under the PFS.
Did Medicare pay separately for CPT 87077 in Q2 2026?
Not at a published national rate. CPT 87077 carries status X (statutory exclusion) in the Q2 2026 release. The statutory definition of physician services does not include this item. Treat the blank amount as unpriced, not as $0.
How often 87077 is billed
Across Original Medicare in CY2024, 87077 ranked #141 of the 7,879 CPT codes billed to Medicare that year, ranked by patients served or total allowed dollars. Patients who received it in 2024 were billed for it an average of 1.6 times that year — more than once per patient.
2024 Medicare fee-for-service only, national totals — Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial volume are excluded, so real-world use runs higher. This is a calendar-year snapshot from the CMS Physician & Other Practitioners dataset, on a different cycle from the Q2 2026 fee schedule the rates above come from.
Common questions
Why is there no payment amount for 87077?
Its status indicator is X (statutory exclusion). The statutory definition of physician services does not include this item. The blank is deliberate: the amount is either unknown or paid under another provision, so reading it as $0 would be wrong.
Why would a Medicare claim for 87077 be denied or paid less?
Each item below comes from a CMS indicator on this page — not general billing advice.
- Its status indicator is X (statutory exclusion) — The statutory definition of physician services does not include this item. See status indicators
Payer-specific coverage and documentation rules live outside these files, so a claim that clears every check here can still be denied on other grounds.
When does this rate change?
CMS publishes a fee schedule release every quarter (January, April, July, October), and each is versioned here. See what changed each release, or get an email when a new release moves rates.
Sources: CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value Files.
Saw this code on your bill?
What is a 87077 visit in patient-friendly terms?
In plain terms: The extra laboratory work needed to pin down exactly which organism an aerobic culture grew, once the initial culture has produced a colony. Where the original culture yields only a presumptive label, this step applies biochemical, mass-spectrometry, or similar methods to name the species definitively. It is reported for each separate isolate that requires this treatment, so a mixed culture can involve several. You'll typically see CPT 87077 on a bill or explanation of benefits (EOB) when a clinician performs or bills for this service.
How this amount is computed
amount = (work RVU × work GPCI + PE RVU × PE GPCI + MP RVU × MP GPCI) × conversion factor. National amounts use GPCI = 1.000. To price an RVU figure of your own, use the RVU-to-dollars converter.
| Component | RVU |
|---|---|
| Work RVU | blank |
| Practice expense RVU (non-facility) | blank |
| Practice expense RVU (facility) | blank |
| Malpractice RVU | blank |
Every rate combines three parts: work (the clinician’s time, skill and effort), practice expense (office overhead — higher when the service is done in a doctor’s own office), and malpractice (the share of liability-insurance cost). A blank means CMS publishes no national number for that part. Read it as unknown, and never as zero.
Rate history by release
National non-facility amount for 87077 across quarterly releases.
| Release | Status | Non-facility | Facility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q3 2026 Jun 30, 2026 – present | X | — | — |
| Q2 2026 Mar 10, 2026 – Jun 29, 2026 | X | — | — |
| Q1 2026 Dec 29, 2025 – Mar 9, 2026 | X | — | — |
| Q4 2025 Sep 11, 2025 – Dec 28, 2025 | X | — | — |
| Q3 2025 Jun 5, 2025 – Sep 10, 2025 | X | — | — |
| Q2 2025 Jun 5, 2025 – Jun 4, 2025 | X | — | — |
| Q1 2025 Dec 23, 2024 – Jun 4, 2025 | X | — | — |
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Source & method
This is computed from CMS's Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Q2 2026 release (schedule pfs, effective April 2026). National amounts apply a GPCI of 1.000 and leave sequestration off. The status indicator decides payability, never the RVU values, so a blank RVU stays blank. Releases are immutable: a rate retrieved for a past quarter always reflects that release. Commercial and cash-pay figures anywhere on this page are arithmetic on the Medicare amount, using commonly cited reimbursement ranges. They're illustrative, and no nationwide claims database stands behind them.
Description written from primary sources: CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value Files. Not derived from AMA CPT descriptor text.
Conversion factor $33.4009 read from the same file, row 11, column 26.
Use the (i) buttons next to each amount above for the exact row, columns, and math.
Cite this rate
This link keeps pointing at the Q2 2026 figures, even after a newer release lands.
CPT 87077 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule rate (Q2 2026). Localis. https://localishealth.com/cpt/87077/2026/B