How much does Medicare pay for CPT 87077?

Medicare allowed an average of $7.91 per service and paid $7.91 of that, the balance being the patient's coinsurance and deductible (2024 data). Providers submitted an average of $32.76, which is what they billed rather than what they received — Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of the charge.

What is CPT code 87077?

Bacterial culture for aerobic isolates. It was billed 1,916,230 times to 1,306,112 Medicare beneficiaries by 1,961 providers in 2024.

Does 87077 pay differently in an office than a hospital?

Yes. The allowed amount averaged $7.91 in an office setting and $7.92 in a facility. The office rate is generally higher because the practice supplies the room, staff and equipment out of that single payment; in a hospital those are billed separately by the facility.

Which specialty bills 87077 most?

Clinical Laboratory, with 1,776,437 services from 352 clinicians. Next are Pathology, Urology, Family Practice.

CPT 87077

Bacterial culture for aerobic isolates

$7.91Medicare-allowed amount per service, averaged across 1,916,230 services

Providers submitted

$32.76

Asking price, not received

Medicare allowed

$7.91

The fee schedule figure

Medicare paid

$7.91

Balance is patient coinsurance

Providers submitted an average of $32.76 for this code and Medicare allowed $7.91 — 4.1× less. That gap is normal and means nothing on its own: Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of what is billed, so the submitted figure describes a hospital chargemaster, not a price anyone paid. Of the allowed amount Medicare paid $7.91 (100%); the rest is the patient’s coinsurance and deductible.

Office pays differently to hospital

Office / non-facility: $7.91
Hospital / facility: $7.92

The facility rate is higher for this code, which is unusual and generally means the service depends on equipment or staffing a hospital carries. 1,914,534 services were billed in an office setting and 1,696 in a facility.

Services: 1,916,230
Beneficiaries: 1,306,112
Providers billing it: 1,961
Total allowed: $15,157,379

What Medicare pays for CPT 87077

Across 1,916,230 services billed by 1,961 providers to 1,306,112 beneficiaries, Medicare allowed an average of $7.91 per service. That is 1.5 services per beneficiary, so this is a code patients typically receive more than once. The allowed amount is the figure that matters: it is what Medicare and the patient together owe, set by the fee schedule and adjusted for local practice costs. What a provider chose to submit has no bearing on it.

Who bills 87077

Specialty	Services	Beneficiaries	Avg allowed	Providers
Clinical Laboratory	1,776,437	1,210,513	$7.91	352
Pathology	70,187	46,374	$7.90	34
Urology	28,554	18,213	$7.90	383
Family Practice	13,035	10,003	$7.88	347
Nurse Practitioner	7,980	6,119	$7.90	273
Internal Medicine	7,416	5,427	$7.89	256
Physician Assistant	5,289	4,152	$7.90	176
Obstetrics & Gynecology	1,809	1,158	$7.89	26
Gastroenterology	1,434	1,238	$7.88	15
Hematology-Oncology	917	670	$7.90	4
Emergency Medicine	705	636	$7.85	35
Otolaryngology	557	406	$7.89	10
Nephrology	556	421	$7.88	17
Infectious Disease	309	77	$7.72	3
Dermatology	249	166	$7.86	7

87077 reimbursement by state

Two different numbers. Allowed is what Medicare actually allowed in that state, which includes the local practice-cost adjustment. Standardized strips that geographic adjustment out of the payment, so it is the column to use when comparing states — a difference there reflects how the code was billed, not what it costs to run a practice locally.

State	Services	Allowed	Standardized pmt	Providers
New Jersey	219,942	$7.91	$7.92	160
California	216,485	$7.90	$7.92	79
Florida	212,213	$7.92	$7.92	37
Texas	178,980	$7.91	$7.92	206
North Carolina	118,366	$7.91	$7.92	96
New York	84,270	$7.91	$7.92	267
Illinois	71,939	$7.92	$7.92	27
Tennessee	69,968	$7.90	$7.92	78
Ohio	67,826	$7.91	$7.92	71
Georgia	66,073	$7.92	$7.92	52
Arizona	63,253	$7.90	$7.92	50
Massachusetts	60,471	$7.92	$7.92	120
Alabama	57,494	$7.91	$7.92	26
Kansas	50,151	$7.92	$7.92	8
Pennsylvania	39,688	$7.92	$7.92	20
Virginia	38,844	$7.91	$7.92	60
Washington	36,211	$7.91	$7.92	68
Oklahoma	27,571	$7.91	$7.92	8
Maryland	27,405	$7.91	$7.92	9
Wisconsin	21,121	$7.84	$7.92	17
Colorado	19,032	$7.90	$7.92	6
Oregon	17,781	$7.86	$7.92	50
Missouri	12,223	$7.92	$7.92	7
Nevada	12,208	$7.91	$7.92	3
Louisiana	11,854	$7.88	$7.92	46
Iowa	11,390	$7.91	$7.92	80
Indiana	10,101	$7.90	$7.92	43
Minnesota	9,742	$7.89	$7.92	56
South Carolina	8,793	$7.91	$7.92	5
Hawaii	8,494	$7.91	$7.92	2
Michigan	8,461	$7.90	$7.92	14
South Dakota	7,447	$7.91	$7.92	24
Utah	7,424	$7.90	$7.92	39
Nebraska	6,960	$7.91	$7.92	4
Arkansas	6,911	$7.92	$7.92	26
Kentucky	6,189	$7.87	$7.92	15
New Mexico	5,066	$7.89	$7.92	3
Rhode Island	4,365	$7.91	$7.92	1
Mississippi	3,910	$7.90	$7.92	6
Idaho	2,307	$7.89	$7.92	19
Maine	1,791	$7.90	$7.92	1
North Dakota	1,547	$7.85	$7.92	7
Delaware	1,239	$7.92	$7.92	1
Connecticut	1,136	$7.90	$7.92	6
New Hampshire	718	$7.89	$7.92	25
Puerto Rico	271	$7.88	$7.92	7
West Virginia	224	$7.92	$7.92	2
Wyoming	217	$7.89	$7.92	2
District of Columbia	137	$7.92	$7.92	1
U.S. Virgin Islands	21	$7.92	$7.92	1

Related codes

87086Bacterial colony count$7.90
87088Bacterial urine culture$7.92
87070Bacterial culture$8.44
87075Bacterial culture$9.27
87045Stool culture$9.24
87046Stool culture$9.24
87081Screening test for pathogenic organisms$6.49
87040Bacterial blood culture$10.09
87015Concentration of specimen for infectious agents$6.54
87076Bacterial culture for anaerobic isolates$7.91
87084Screening test for pathogenic organisms$26.42
87071Bacterial culture and colony count$9.67

Billing this code is not the same as earning it

An allowed amount is revenue to a practice, not income to a clinician. It funds staff, premises, equipment and supplies before anyone is paid. What clinicians actually earn is published separately by the Department of Labor, and what industry pays them is published separately again by CMS — this site carries both.

What doctors are paid →·Look up a clinician →·All procedure codes →

Where this comes from. CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners, by Provider and Service, 2024. It covers fee-for-service Original Medicare Part B only — not Medicare Advantage, not Medicaid, and not commercial insurance, which typically pays more for the same code.

How it is averaged. CMS publishes one average per provider per code. Every figure here is re-weighted by the number of services, so a clinician who billed the code 4,000 times counts 4,000 times more than one who billed it twice. CMS also suppresses any provider-code pair with fewer than 11 beneficiaries, so low-volume practice is missing from these totals by design.