# CPT 88311

> Medicare paid $22.01 for CPT 88311 in the office (non-facility) setting and $22.01 in a facility under the Q3 2020 Physician Fee Schedule, effective July 2020. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2020, when it increased 0.1%.

## What it is

A preparation step used when a specimen contains bone or other calcified material that is too hard to slice on a microtome. The tissue is soaked in an acid or chelating solution until the mineral is dissolved and what remains can be cut into thin sections and stained. It is reported alongside the pathology examination it supports, not on its own, because it is extra laboratory work performed before the slides can be read.

## Selected release

- Release: Q3 2020 (2020 C)
- Effective: July 1 – September 30, 2020
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $22.01
- Facility national allowed amount: $22.01
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 0.24
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 0.35
- Facility practice expense RVU: 0.35
- Malpractice RVU: 0.02
- Conversion factor: 36.0896
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q3 2020)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/files/zip/rvu20c-updated-06192020.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU20_V0618.csv, row 15,456
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88311/2020/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88311/2020/C
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:09:46+00:00