The article starts off by talking about a young patient who came into the ER for stitches. The family overall had a great experience and was really pleased with their experience. They then received a bill for 3 stitches at a cost of $2229. This is a very common price for something such as this. In the US, the average cost for a persons expense at a hospital for one day is $4,000, where hospital cost charges are 1/3 of the United States 2.7 trillion dollar annual health care cost.
Hospitals do have a reason for the increase in prices on a yearly basis. They must help maintain the hospitals with the most up to date equipment as well as keeping the maintenance of the hospital as modern as possible. Majority of them are shown as non profit, but find a way. At the end of the day, hospitals costs millions to operate and continue its services; with that being said, the prices will continue to rise as technology increases.
“Hospitals see where they’re making money and try to do more of that,” said Dr. David Gifford
1. First major thing that I took away from this article was the few constraints at hospitals when it comes to pricing. For any item or product, the pricing of the item is determined by the hospital on a yearly basis. So there could be a massive different in terms of pricing for things such as an ER visit between hospitals. If any urgency that is needed to be solved in a ER, a patient doesn't really have time to look at the prices of the charges that are going to be determined after the ER visit. This is where the concept of geographical prices comes in.
2. The second major concept that I took out from this article was the Net Income of Hospitals. In SF, after Wells Fargo, the next most employed company is California Pacific Medical Center. There Net Income was also $200 million which is absolutely absurd for a "non profit" company. The CEO for this hospital makes over $5 million and have broken ground on their new campus that will cost $2.6 billion dollars with upgraded facilities. At the end of the day, business for these hospitals are very good because of high demand. Hospitals understand that they are able to increase prices and there will still be demand of the product. They can help control their own market.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your review about the $500 stitch article. I found your review of this article to be particularly interesting since my article was similar in content.
My favorite part about your review was how "Hospitals do have a reason for the increase in prices on a yearly basis. They must help maintain the hospitals with the most up to date equipment as well as keeping the maintenance of the hospital as modern as possible". I found this interesting because it seems as if hospitals are buying the most up to date equipment in order to provide the best care, but why are hospitals buying such expensive equipment if it is going to put patients in a bigger financial hole? Personally, I think that the government should provide aid for technology in healthcare in order to cut costs for patients and allow hospitals to provide the best equipment.
My article was similar to yours in that cost of surgical operations has been rising. In my article, Mr. Drier, encountered a $117,000 surprise medical bill charged by an assistant surgeon. Recently, patients have been charged excess amounts of money for "drive-by doctoring" where doctors have out-of-network physicians visit patients while in the hospital so they are able to increase the price of the operations.
I think the government needs to aid technology in healthcare for your blog post and clear up the grey area with "drop-ins" for my article. Overall, I enjoyed reading about your insight of your article.
Jakob Grasst
Hey Jakob, good points about hospitals buying up expensive equipment. I think part of it has to do with the perceptions that patients would prefer to be admitted into the hospital that has the shinier and newer equipment versus the older tools (a decision many likely regret later on). Additionally, device manufacturers are "innovating" to the point where older devices are no longer supported by the company or can sometimes become obsolete. Additionally, it allows them the excuse of charging higher prices, and none of these seem like great options.
DeleteThe summary of your article was very insightful and eye opening to the costs of the that happen in hospital visits. What I want to know is how much those stiches cost the hospital to buy. With that knowledge people can look at the ridiculous prices and demand they be lowered. Another thing that stood out was that the hospitals were able to declare nonprofit even though they received $200 million in Net Income. I believe the government needs to change their views on what nonprofits actually are.
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