# CPT 88312

> Medicare paid $98.10 for CPT 88312 in the office (non-facility) setting and $98.10 in a facility under the Q4 2015 Physician Fee Schedule, effective October 2015. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This is a 0.5% increase from the previous quarter.

## What it is

An extra stain applied to a tissue slide to make infectious organisms visible, along with the pathologist's reading of the result. Routine staining shows the architecture of tissue but leaves most bacteria, fungi, and mycobacteria essentially invisible, so a targeted chemical stain is used to pick them out against the background. Silver stains for fungi and acid-fast stains for tuberculosis-type organisms are the familiar examples. This is the microorganism arm of a two-part family; stains aimed at anything other than organisms are reported with the companion code.

## Selected release

- Release: Q4 2015 (2015 D)
- Effective: October 1 – December 31, 2015
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $98.10
- Facility national allowed amount: $98.10
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 0.54
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 2.17
- Facility practice expense RVU: 2.17
- Malpractice RVU: 0.02
- Conversion factor: 35.9335
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q4 2015)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicare-fee-for-service-payment/physicianfeesched/downloads/rvu15d.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU15_OCT05_V1001.csv, row 14,308
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88312/2015/D
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/88312/2015/D
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:06:14+00:00