OT: Corporations taking advantage of ER pricing.

[idamtnboy]

In the ever continuing push to squeeze money out of patients and insurance companies corporations have come up with a new twist - stand alone ER facilities. Here are some selected quotes.

Free-standing ERs can make a lot of money because they charge ER prices. A visit that might have cost $200 at an urgent-care center can cost four or five times as much at an ER.

Bills are just like at the hospital ER — you pay for the treatment, the doctor's fee and something called a facility fee. That fee is for all the overhead, including expensive equipment like the CAT scanner and the lab.

Steve Henderson, 41, lives in Spring, a suburb north of Houston. He woke up one morning in March with back spasms so bad he could barely walk. He dragged himself to his car and drove to what he thought was an urgent-care facility.

Henderson got a shot in his back, a prescription and, later, a bill for $1,200 — $900 of that for the facility fee.

"I knew there'd be some kind of fee for this place. But $900 for just walking in the door is outrageous," says Henderson, who is insured but hadn't met his deductible. He was on the hook for the whole fee.

Insurance companies are also pushing back. By law, they must cover emergency room visits, even if the ER isn't in their network.

"For these free-standing ERs, we've seen our dollars and visits just about double over the past year," says Shara McClure, a vice president for . "While ER is a choice, it's a high-cost choice and it's one that can cost five to seven times more than a typical office visit."

The complete transcript and audio are here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/08 ... onvenience

[eeckel]

I heard this piece on NPR also. I recently used a hospital based urgent care center and they sent me on to the hospital emergency department for a ruptured appendix. My insurance covered it all. I feel very bad for people who get taken advantage of because they don't discern the difference between a boutique emergency facility and an urgent care center. It's hard to be a savvy consumer when you feel like crap.