Feeling Ill? It May Cost You $5,226 a Day ; Colorado Hospitals Charge 12.9% More in ’04, Report Finds

Colorado hospitals treated sicker patients last year, which helped spur a 12.9 percent jump in the price of care.

Hospitals charged $5,226 for a day of care, up from an average charge of $4,630 in 2003.

That’s because more procedures were undertaken in outpatient facilities, so patients who got admitted to the hospital were sicker, according to experts at the Colorado Health & Hospital Association, which issued its annual report on costs and charges today.

Doctors performed 392,760 outpatient procedures in Colorado last year, 12 percent more than five years ago.

Meanwhile, the number of inpatient cases declined 0.5 percent, to 471,300, from 2003, the report said.

“The shift from inpatient to outpatient has been going on since the 1980s,” said Craig McKnight, the chief financial officer for Centura Health.

Gall bladder surgery, for instance, used to require a multiday hospital stay, and now it’s an outpatient procedure, he said.

“It’s not necessarily less expensive, because of the high technology involved, but it’s much more successful for the patient,” he said.

Medical-cost inflation was 5 percent to 6 percent, and that contributed to the increase in charges. Costs are climbing due to new technology, expensive drugs and cost-of-living inflation.

And hospitals that see high volumes of Medicaid, Medicare and uninsured patients may shift costs to managed-care companies in the form of higher charges.

Hospital charges, the price a hospital sets for a procedure, are much like automobile sticker prices – few people actually pay them.

Instead, charges are discounted as much as 50 percent in contracts with health insurers. The government gets steep discounts, too.

Consumers should use the data as a rough guide when they research or negotiate their bills with hospitals, said Marty Arizumi, a spokeswoman for the CHHA.

The number of babies born in Colorado rose 21 percent to 57,000 last year, the data showed.

Women giving birth are 27 years old, on average. The average age of mothers for all births has inched up from 24.6 years to 27.2 during the past three decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The average age for an orthopedic procedure patient was 59, suggesting that, because of Coloradans’ active lifestyles, joint replacement patients here are younger than their peers nationwide.

That, in turn, can traumatize joints and spur replacement surgeries for 40- and 50-year-olds, said Dr. Douglas Dennis, an orthopedic surgeon with Colorado Joint Replacement.

INFOBOX

And the bill is . . .

* Top 10 procedures and 2004 average hospital charges in the metro area:

1. Newborn care $1,950

2. Vaginal delivery $7,000

3. Cesarean delivery $11,500

4. Pneumonia $18,700

5. Knee replacement $34,300

6. Heart failure $21,600

7. Surgery of ovaries or uterus $16,800

8. Hip replacement $54,450

9. Balloon angioplasty $50,300

10. Bowel or intenstine procedures $59,000

Source: Colorado Health & Hospital Association