Why are hospital bills so expensive? Here are a few reasons. These charges include Facility fees, uncompensated care, and in some cases, indirect costs. Indirect costs are the ones that you, the patient, don’t know about and can’t afford. Regardless of why the hospital bills are so high, you can get out of debt by taking a few steps to lower them. Read on to learn more.
Facility fees
Hospital facility fees are hidden costs that are difficult to understand. Hospitals often calculate these fees in a black box. Consumer Reports has published an article outlining hospital facility fee rates. These costs are often more than one hundred and fifty percent of a hospital’s total charge. Hospital facility fees vary by state, but Connecticut has a law that requires hospitals to tell patients about them up front. But it’s not the only state that doesn’t have a law that requires patients to know about facility fees.
ER facility fees are categorized into five levels, based on the severity of the complaint. These fees increase as the complaint becomes more serious. More resources and time are expended to treat the patient. In general, a patient with chest pain, for example, would receive a level four or five facility fee. A patient with a sprained ankle, on the other hand, would receive a level one or two facility fee.
Medicare and CMS have taken steps to regulate facility fees. One of these changes is requiring providers to explain facility fees to patients seven days before the procedure. This way, patients aren’t surprised by an unexpected bill, and hospitals won’t have to charge for preventive care. However, there’s a catch. The new law does not prohibit hospital facility fees for emergency room visits. A hospital cannot collect facility fees for preventive care.
Facility fees are a common source of disagreement between insurance providers and hospitals. The fees can add hundreds or even thousands of dollars to a hospital bill, and are often unreasonably high compared to the actual cost of the service. A recent article in Health Affairs highlighted an example of a hospital facility fee that was $418, or nearly 40 percent of a patient’s bill. Hospitals justify these fees as a necessary way to cover their costs and provide round-the-clock care.
Facility fees are legal in most states. However, patients can negotiate with healthcare providers to reduce the charges, or appeal to their insurers for more coverage. Consumer Reports’ experts explain how to avoid facility fees and negotiate with healthcare providers. The article offers a free guide to appealing hospital facility fees. You can also contact the Patient Advocate Foundation for assistance. If you want to learn more about how to negotiate with hospitals, check out their site today.
Cost of uncompensated care
Hospitals receive significant amounts of uncompensated care. In 2001, federal, state, and local governments spent a total of $33.6 billion on the uninsured. Approximately 61 percent of the uninsured received free or uncompensated care. The rest spent money to cover the costs. This significant amount of money is offset by the substantial public funding for uncompensated care. But how much of that public funding comes from uninsured patients?
The vast majority of the private contributions to uncompensated care provided to the uninsured comes from physicians in private practice, accounting for about $15 billion. However, there is some evidence that private payers subsidize this type of care. In addition, shifting costs to private insurers is unlikely to have a large impact on the prices of health care services. Nonetheless, uncompensated care is an important source of funding for hospitals.
The cost of uncompensated care in hospitals is increasing at a steady pace. Hospitals with over 250 beds increased their uncompensated care costs by 6.2% annually in 2018. On average, hospitals with more than 250 beds spent $2.3 million in uncompensated care in 2018.
While the cost of uncompensated care increases due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals continue to report record profits. Uncompensated care is one of the leading causes of bankruptcy. A hospital’s bad debt is the amount of unpaid care it receives from private payers. As a result, hospitals face a difficult time making ends meet and preventing layoffs. By analyzing the cost of uncompensated care, hospitals are able to make informed decisions about whether to expand or cut costs.
Although hospital costs increased across states, the overall rate of decline in uncompensated care in the last five years was smaller. Among nonexpansion states, hospitals with a lower uncompensated care burden saw a drop of nearly 40 percent. Hospitals with low or medium uncompensated care burdens saw a smaller decline but still significant declines. Further, hospital costs decreased at a slower pace in nonexpansion states.
Indirect cost
The overall objective of the process for allocating the indirect cost of hospital bills is to distribute this amount among patient care, organized research, instruction, and other hospital activities in proportion to the nature of resource use. In order to achieve precision, a cost grouping system may be needed to break down the indirect cost of hospital bills into separate functional categories. For example, the cost of purchasing supplies and equipment should be grouped separately from those related to personnel administration.
The indirect cost of hospital bills may be based on a wide variety of factors, including inpatient and outpatient care. A model scenario was developed based on real operational data from a medium-sized regional hospital. The model utilized a number of factors to determine the indirect cost of hospital bills, including the number of days an individual is in the hospital and the rate per hour. However, several methods were discarded due to their complexity and incomplete economic and medical data.
The indirect cost of hospital bills should include expenses related to employee pension plans. The hospital should separate the expenses for pension benefits as a separate cost group. This should be done within practical limits. The practical limit for separate cost groupings should take into account the materiality of the amounts involved and the precision achieved by less selective methods. Further, indirect costs are not included in the direct cost of hospital bills. Indirect costs are those that are not allocated to a specific function but are related to the primary function of the hospital.
Indirect costs of hospital bills should be allocated to the appropriate areas based on the services rendered by the hospital. For example, the indirect cost of patient care may include the costs of departmental research. The expenses for staff training, research, and patient care can be determined by an attribution formula that identifies a cost center. A cost center will also consider indirect costs as the overall cost of hospital care. If the hospital provides services to patients that are not directly related to the patient, the costs of indirect services may exceed those of the patient, resulting in a reduction in patient care.
Lean harder on the patients who owe them money
If you’ve seen a bill in the hospital, chances are you’ve been dragged down by a mountain of debt. Many of these bills are due to mistakes in billing or charting, or to insurance companies playing hardball. As a result, hospitals may try to justify placing the burden of the debt on the patient. In such cases, it makes sense to lean harder on the patients who owe you money.
Traditionally, hospitals bill patients in steps, which make it difficult for patients to keep up with the monthly payments. The old system usually sent past-due accounts to collections or wrote them off. But the new system tries to balance patient responsibility and ability to pay. Bills should reflect the necessity of care versus the need to pay. To make this work, hospitals must be more transparent in their billing practices and make it easier for patients to set aside money to pay their bills.