[Histonet]Hospital costs/new topic

[Andrea Grantham]

I'm sure that most of us would be amazed to see an itemized list of 
hospital charges. I had Mohs surgery in Feb. That was done at the Mohs 
surgeon's office and the charges were pretty much as I expected. Then two 
days later I had reconstruction surgery done to repair the defect - 3 1/2 
hours of outpatient surgery and the hospital bill was over $19,000. This 
was not including the anesthesiologist and plastic surgeon's charges. Kind 
of blew me away. Thankfully my insurance plan is wonderful and my 
responsibility was very minimal but the itemized statement was wild!
Andi


At 01:28 PM 5/30/2006 -0400, you wrote:
>I had to write when I read the post on hospital charges. A few months  agao,
>my husband was having what I was pretty certain was appendix pain so we  went
>in to the ER. After they established that he did in fact have a very ripe
>appendix that needed to come out, we were in the ER for over 8 hours. He was
>admitted after he came out of recovery and was there for ~27 hours. I always
>like to take a look at the itemized bill after you are released. Its rather
>amusing. There were so many charges for the nurses coming in and changing 
>his
>bandages and bedding and I did most of that myself. Sometimes I had to 
>call and
>practically beg them to come and change the bedding do drainage etc. They
>rarely  came by except on scheduled rounds. We had to empty his drain 
>tube, etc.
>If I  had a spare IV bag laying around, I would have changed that too 
>since the
>alarm  wouldnt shut off (alarm silence button was broken). I asked if we
>could have  some items to give him a sponge bath so he would feel a little 
>more
>clean, get  the betadine and other stuff off. They were real quick to 
>inform me
>that that  was MY job not theirs. Times have changes. Long story short,
>unruptured appendix  , 1 day in the hospital all total ~30k. They said 
>that if it
>had ruptured  it would have been closer to 5-7 days and we dont even want to
>think about that.  I was so thankful to have insurance. We only ended up 
>paying a
>few thousand  dollars.
>
>
>Jodi
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.....................................................................
: Andrea Grantham, HT(ASCP)     Dept. of Cell Biology & Anatomy     :
: Sr. Research Specialist       University of Arizona               :
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