Appendix removal costs vary enormously in US: study
Dr. Jason Greenspan (L) and emergency room nurse Junizar Manansala in the ER of Mission Community Hospital in Panorama City, Calif., on Jan. 28, 2009.
A new study by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco has found enormous disparities in what hospitals in California charge for appendix removal.
According to the study, published today in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, patients’ bills for the procedure ranged from $1,529 to $182,955, ABC News reported.
The researchers looked at how much hospitals charged in 2009 to treat 19,368 patients under age 60 with uncomplicated cases of appendicitis that required hospital stays of less than four days, the New York Times reported.
While it was evident that some procedures were more expensive because patients had more tests or required more care, researchers could find no explanation for about one-third of the cost differences, the New York Times reported. Within the same county, the lowest and highest charges differed by tens of thousands of dollars, the study found.
"There is no standard in the United States for reasonable prices or reference pricing," the study’s lead author Dr. Renee Hsia, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, told ABC News. "If you go to a hospital, they can charge you whatever they want. Negotiated rates are trade secrets.”
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Caroline Steinberg, a vice president at the American Hospital Association, told the Associated Press that if two patients with the exact same condition received exactly the same services in the same hospital, the charges would be similar.
According to the AP, the highest and lowest bills in the study went to two patients who were each hospitalized for one day, had minimally invasive surgery and had similar numbers of tests.
The highest bill came from a Silicon Valley hospital, the AP reported. The patient also had cancer, but her bill didn't show any cancer-related treatment. The lowest bill came from a hospital in rural Northern California.
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