It's not necessarily hard figure out what bacteria it is, but it takes time and expensive lab work. There are companies out there developing more rapid test pa

It's not necessarily hard figure out what bacteria it is, but it takes time and expensive lab work. There are companies out there developing more rapid test panels that will give an answer within minutes or hours, and they charge in the $200 range to test for dozens of pathogens at once. Someone I know works for such a company, and a lot of the "doctor ran 20 tests for $x000 when they should have just run one" stories in the news are actually about those types of all-in-one rapid tests, and the insurance/hospital doesn't know how to bill it reasonably.