# CPT 88305

> Medicare paid $70.28 for CPT 88305 in the office (non-facility) setting and $70.28 in a facility under the Q3 2019 Physician Fee Schedule, effective July 2019. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2019, when it increased 0.1%.

## What it is

A pathologist's examination of a tissue specimen by eye and then under the microscope, at the level covering most diagnostic biopsies. This is the workhorse of the surgical pathology family and by far the most frequently reported of its levels, because it is what a skin biopsy, a colon polyp, a prostate needle core, a breast biopsy, or an endometrial sample is examined under. What separates it from the level below is that the diagnosis is genuinely in question: the pathologist is deciding whether tissue is normal, inflamed, precancerous, or malignant. Larger cancer resections are handled at higher levels of the same family.

## Selected release

- Release: Q3 2019 (2019 C)
- Effective: July 1 – September 30, 2019
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $70.28
- Facility national allowed amount: $70.28
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 0.75
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 1.17
- Facility practice expense RVU: 1.17
- Malpractice RVU: 0.03
- Conversion factor: 36.0391
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q3 2019)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicare-fee-for-service-payment/physicianfeesched/downloads/rvu19c.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU19_JUL.csv, row 15,155
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88305/2019/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88305/2019/C
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:09:02+00:00