Pete's BLOG-Day 26,409. Another medical horror story

Today is Saturday, March 9, 2013. My stats today: 10 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes on the exercise ball  and 45 minutes of walking = 2.5 miles for a March total of 20.7 miles. My weight was 162.8 pounds.

QUOTE from Jim Doyne: "Sound does really travel slower than light. The advice parents give to their 18 year-olds doesn't reach them until they're about 40."

My THOUGHT today has to do with another medical horror story from the March 4 TIME Magazine. This true story is about a 64 year-old lady (Janice) from Stamford, Conn. One night last summer she felt chest pains. She was taken by ambulance for 4 miles to the ER at the Stamford Hospital, a non-profit hospital.

First, the GOOD NEWS - After 3 hours of tests and some brief encouters with doctors, she was told she had indigestion and sent home.

Now, the BAD NEWS - she got the bill and it was: $995 for the 4 mile ambulance ride; $3,000 for the doctors; and $17,000 for the hospital; The total was $21,000 for a false alarm.

Janice had no health insurance, she had been out of work for a year. Among the hospital's charges were 3 "TROPONIN 1" tests for $199.50 each. The TROPONIN tests measures the levels of certain proteins in the blood whose release from the heart is a strong indicator of a heart attack. Some labs like to have them done at intervals. When the author talked to Stamford spokesman Scott Orstad he found out the $199.50 charge was taken from what Orstad called the hopital's CHARGEMASTER.

What is the CHARGEMASTER? The "chargemaster" is the hospital's internal price list. The "chargemaster" lists what the price/cost should be for every conceivable procedure/service done at a hosptial. It used to be the size of a phone book but now it is a massive computer file, thousands of items long, maintained at every hospital.

If Janice had been on Medicare the hospital would have been paid $13.94 for each TROPONIN test rather than the $199.50 she was charged.  The total would have been $41.82 instead of $598.50.

Janice was also charged $157.61 for a CBC (complete blood count) - Medicare would have paid $11.02. According to Stamford's tax filing (2010) it listed total expenses for laboratory work in the 12 months covered by the report was $27.5 million. Its total charges were $292.2 million. That means it charged about 11 times its costs.

AND THIS IS A NON-PROFIT HOSPITAL!