# CPT 88304

> Medicare paid $42.22 for CPT 88304 in the office (non-facility) setting and $42.22 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 0.9%.

## What it is

A pathologist's examination of a tissue specimen, first by eye and then under the microscope after it is processed onto slides. Surgical pathology is graded into levels by how much work the specimen demands, and this is one of the lower rungs: routine tissue removed for a benign or already-known reason, where the exam mostly confirms the expected. Typical material includes a gallbladder taken out for stones, tonsils, an appendix removed for ordinary inflammation, or a small skin cyst.

## Selected release

- Release: Q4 2021 (2021 D)
- Effective: October 1 – December 31, 2021
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $42.22
- Facility national allowed amount: $42.22
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 0.22
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 0.97
- Facility practice expense RVU: 0.97
- Malpractice RVU: 0.02
- 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 15,543
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88304/2021/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88304/2021/D
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:10:59+00:00