Elisabeth Rosenthal, a former emergency room physician, now editor in chief of Kaiser Health News, was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital for a “complicated head injury.” As she explained in the New York Times, Johns Hopkins is in Maryland, the only state in the nation that controls what hospitals can charge for services. At Johns Hopkins, her visits with top neurologists were billed at $350 to $400. Her spinal tap at Johns Hopkins was performed in an exam room by a neurology fellow. It was billed as an office visit ($300 to $400). In seeking a second opinion at a “prestigious” New York hospital, she also had a spinal tap. This one was performed in a special suite “under ultrasound guidance by neuroradiologists. It was billed as ‘surgery,’ for a price of $6,244.38. The physician charge was $3,782.”
The online version of the article allows readers to make
comments. Here’s what Canadian reader (and anesthesiologist) wrote: “To
address the differential costing that the author experienced, let’s get
something clear. A ‘spinal tap’ or lumbar puncture is a five-minute procedure
routinely done (as in Johns Hopkins) without fancy imaging. I am a pediatric anesthesiologist
and for our oncology kids who need repeated LPs for monitoring and delivery of
chemotherapy it takes 15 minutes per case including the anesthetic with the
oncologist doing the test. The costs quoted for New York are obscene—and since
we know this was not a difficult LP as done easily previously by a trainee—and unjustifiable.
The doctors may not set the prices, but I would argue that they are part of the
problem by colluding in such a system and collecting the dosh.”
Oh, Canada!
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