Hospital facility fees. They can feel like a charge just for walking in the door. Hospitals say they go toward overhead on facilities with lots of specialized equipment and staff, like emergency rooms.
But these fees have grown and become more common in recent years. And as hospitals buy up outpatient facilities, patients are starting to get charged facility fees for routine tests, procedures, and visits to the doctor’s office.
In this episode of “An Arm and a Leg,” host Dan Weissmann speaks with Georgann Boatright, a retired speech pathologist from Oxford, Mississippi, who was told by her local hospital that she needed to pay an $8,000 “operating room fee” for a routine test. She was determined not to get overcharged, even if it meant driving hours out of state to get the test someplace cheaper.
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This is original content from KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. It is reprinted here with permission.
