inflated prices

The cost in time and money of one Head CT insurance

While taking the medical history of a Urgent Care patient suffering from a sinus infection, they mentioned that they had a surgery in a month to fix a deviated septum. The surgeon had ordered a Head CT prior to the surgery and the patient had been fighting with the insurance company for the last few months trying to get approval.

It was recently done a few days before with her insurance covering $1,300 of the $1,800 cost for the test. She only had to pick up the last $500 of the bill.

Unfortunately we felt obliged to inform her that she shouldn’t have wasted those two months fighting with her insurance because we could have done a same day Head CT at an outpatient facility nearby we contract with for only $350 cash. The surgeon had likely ordered the CT at his hospital not realizing the differences in the cost were so dramatic or that frequently patients end up getting stuck with the bill.