The National Hospital Bill: The Most Expensive Conditions by Payer, 2008

Excerpt

This Statistical Brief is an update of recurring Statistical Briefs that provide the latest information on the national inpatient hospital bill (aggregate community hospital charges). Using 2008 data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), this report presents information on the top 20 most expensive conditions and shows how their ranking changed from previous reports on 2004 and 2006 hospital care. It also describes the distribution of the nation's 2008 hospital bill by primary payer and illustrates the conditions accounting for the largest percentage of each payer's hospital bills. The primary payers examined are Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and the uninsured.

Hospital charges, it should be noted, are different from hospital costs. Hospital costs reflect the amount it cost a hospital to provide services during a stay, while charges are the amounts that hospitals bill for a stay. As a result, hospital charges are generally higher than costs and are more than the amount paid by payers because of negotiated discounts (the exception being the uninsured patients, who are expected to pay the full charge by many hospitals). Nonetheless, charges can be a useful benchmark for comparing how expensive different types of hospitalizations are, such as comparisons between types of medical conditions.