Discover Our Hospital Invoice Sample for Research and Development

Hospital invoice sample for Research and Development

one of the questions that comes up all the time is what about these hospital bills how exactly do they break down how do you make sense of it there's no question it leaves a lot of people scratching their heads so I want to give you a little bit of an example here by taking inside this operating room uh this is the hospital where I work where I'm a neurosurgeon and just having an operation performed in a room like this costs about $3,000 an hour that's for starters come on in give you a couple of quick examples if you look at a hospital bill uh you might see an IV bag charge it's an IV like this about $280 just for the IV bag that might strike people as as very high uh a stapler this is a stapler that's often used in surgery something like this cost about $1,200 this is a chest tube if someone has compression of one of their lungs they might need a chest tube like this that costs about $1,100 and you'll find examples like that really all over a room like this uh suture something that's used in just about every operating room in the world this type of suture over here costs about $200 and if you look at uh even even devices like uh this this is a needle that's used for biopsy so if there's a concern that someone has a tumor they would use a needle like this and this is going to cost about $800 now it's important to keep in mind if you ask the manufacturers of a device like this uh why so much money they'll say well it took years to develop something like this the research and development costs are significant also they're guaranteeing a certain level of effectiveness of this needle that costs money as well but something maybe you didn't know when you look at a hospital bill it's not just the cost of the supplies there's also administ R of costs that are built in there's the cost of covering people who simply don't have insurance or can't pay that's built into these costs as well and finally keep in mind that what is charged and what is ultimately paid are two very different numbers the typical Hospital collects about 4% of every dollar that they collect about four cents of every dollar that they bill so it's not coming out in massive profits it's coming out as a result of underpayment from the government I'll tell you you know the the cost breakdown like I just gave you on lots of these different supplies a lot of people simply never see and what we have found is a lot of people don't care as well if you're insured uh some people may not even open the hospital bill but there are about 50 million people uninsured out there and they care very much about hospital bills like this and what you can do is you can call the hospital and get a detailed breakdown and while you're on the phone with the hospital if the cost seems still too high or just hard to understand you might be able to negotiate some of these prices down