The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, in Baltimore, has named Texas General Hospital in Grand Prairie the most expensive hospital in the state. That may mean that the hospital will henceforth have to struggle to attract patients for elective services, reports the Dallas Observer.
Last year, Johns Hopkins used Medicare data from 2012 to rank the 50 hospitals in America that charge commercial insurers the greatest markups above Medicare rates. Texas General came in at No. 11, making it the hospital with the greatest mark-up price in the state, according to the report.
The report found U.S. hospitals on average charged 3.4 times the Medicare-allowable cost in 2012. The top 50 hospitals named in Johns Hopkins’s report charged an average of more than 10 times the allowable cost.
The high insurance rates are passed onto patients that receive out-of-network treatment at the hospital, known as “balance billing”.
A hospital spokesman said that Texas General’s rates were so high because the hospital does not take adequate steps to collect payment from patients.
To read a Becker’s Hospital Review story on this, please hit this link.
