A hospital in Florida charged one patient nearly $9,000 for an abdominal CT exam -- drastically exceeding the $268 he paid for the same exam at an imaging center just a few months earlier, according to an April 9 article by NPR.
The patient, Benjamin Hynden, made a medical appointment to see his physician for pain and discomfort in his abdomen. He was referred for a CT exam to an imaging center in Fort Myers, FL, where the bill came to $268.
Three months after the exam, Hynden visited the emergency room at Gulf Coast Medical Center of Lee Health for a similar complaint and underwent a CT exam, following the advice of the medical staff who attended to him.
He was "shocked" to discover that his bill for this exam hit almost $8,900. His health insurance company ultimately negotiated the cost down to approximately $5,500, which was still 20 times more than the price of his previous CT exam. The online pricing tool Healthcare Bluebook listed the general price range for an abdominal CT exam in Fort Myers as $474 to $3,700.
In this case, the high cost of Hynden's exam may have been a result of the pricing power of the Lee Health hospital network, according to Gerard Anderson, PhD, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. Lee Health owns four major hospitals, a children's hospital, a rehabilitation center, and several physician practices around the area.
The network's dominant position lends it great bargaining power, Anderson said. This kind of hospital consolidation has been driving prices higher in recent years, according to the NPR article.
