# CPT 88185

> Medicare paid $23.03 for CPT 88185 in the office (non-facility) setting and $23.03 in a facility under the Q4 2021 Physician Fee Schedule, effective October 2021. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2021, when it increased 2.9%.

## What it is

Flow cytometry streams cells single-file past a laser and sorts them by the markers they carry on their surface or inside them, which is how leukemias, lymphomas and immune disorders get characterized. This code covers the laboratory bench work for markers beyond the first in a panel - the staining, running the sample, and capturing the data - and not the pathologist's interpretation, which sits under separate codes. Real diagnostic panels run long lists of markers, so the extra-marker work forms the bulk of the effort on a specimen.

## Selected release

- Release: Q4 2021 (2021 D)
- Effective: October 1 – December 31, 2021
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $23.03
- Facility national allowed amount: $23.03
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 0.00
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 0.66
- Facility practice expense RVU: 0.66
- Malpractice RVU: 0.00
- Conversion factor: 34.8931
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q4 2021)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/files/zip/rvu21d.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU21_OCT.csv, row 15,503
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88185/2021/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88185/2021/D
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:10:59+00:00