This post will probably be understandable only to a few, but here it goes. Today at work I had a culture that had 8 identified organisms. When you final a culture you charge billing codes based on the organisms identified. Some are aerobic organisms, some anaerobic, other yeast, etc. There are only billing codes up to 4 organisms (i.e. - BA1, BA2, BA3, BA4) and you can't use any of the codes twice. So if you have 5 organisms you use a BA4 and a BA1 charge, or even a BA2 and a BA3, they just have to add up to 5. So today with my culture with 8 organisms I started off with a BA4 and then I thought a BA2, but then I'd need two BA2's so it would have to be a BA3 and a BA1. I got a kick out of this and shared with Chris, Tina and our student that I'd used almost every billing code for aerobes that we had. We laughed and our student said, "Wait, so you can only bill for a maximum of 10 organisms?" Yeah...but we've never made it to 10 aerobic organisms, it's always usually a mix of aerobes, anaerobes and/or yeast. I laughed and said that worrying about running out of billing codes could only be a Memorial microbiology problem! No other laboratory works up as many organisms in a single culture as we do. Am I right Kiersten?
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