CPT 87252
Tissue culture inoculation for virus isolation
Asking price, not received
The fee schedule figure
Balance is patient coinsurance
Providers submitted an average of $236.33 for this code and Medicare allowed $25.53 — 9.3× 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 $25.53 (100%); the rest is the patient’s coinsurance and deductible.
- Services
- 1,704
- Beneficiaries
- 1,677
- Providers billing it
- 18
- Total allowed
- $43,503
Medicare Part B, 2024
Services × allowed amount
What Medicare pays for CPT 87252
Across 1,704 services billed by 18 providers to 1,677 beneficiaries, Medicare allowed an average of $25.53 per service. 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 87252
| Specialty | Services | Beneficiaries | Avg allowed | Providers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clinical Laboratory | 1,704 | 1,677 | $25.53 | 18 |
87252 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 1,189 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| California | 102 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 3 |
| Texas | 76 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 2 |
| New Jersey | 75 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| Tennessee | 55 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| New York | 42 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 2 |
| Oregon | 31 | $24.34 | $25.55 | 1 |
| Utah | 26 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| Arizona | 25 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| Alabama | 22 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| Washington | 20 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| Hawaii | 15 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| Ohio | 15 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
| Kansas | 11 | $25.55 | $25.55 | 1 |
Related codes
- 87205Special gram or giemsa stain for microorganism$4.17
- 87209Special stain for parasites$17.57
- 87206Special fluorescent and/or acid fast stain for microorganism$5.27
- 87210Smear for infectious agents$5.67
- 87220Tissue fungi or parasites$4.17
- 87207Special stain for inclusion bodies or parasites$7.96
- 87255Virus isolation$33.06
- 87230Microbial toxin or antitoxin assay$19.34
- 87254Virus isolation$18.86
- 87275Detection test by immunofluorescent technique for influenza b virus$11.88
- 87276Detection test by immunofluorescent technique for influenza a virus$15.50
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.