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Here's What St. Louis Regional Hospitals Charge For 100 Most Common Procedures

(via Flickr/Tax Credits)

For the first time, the federal government has released the prices that hospitals charge for the 100 most common inpatient procedures.

The prices for a given procedure can vary by tens of thousands of dollars.

In the St. Louis region, for example, the price for a major lower joint replacement replacement ranged from less than $26,000 at Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital to over $96,000 at Gateway Regional Medical Center in Granite City, Ill.

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The president and CEO of the Missouri Foundation for Health, Robert Hughes, says insurance companies use these prices as a starting point for negotiating the much lower rates they actually end up paying.

“The people who are most at risk of having to pay the full list price would be someone who has no insurance and goes in and is not perhaps aware that almost all hospitals will negotiate these list prices.”

Hughes says these data should help shed some light on our fee-for-service healthcare system that he says needs to change.

Follow Véronique LaCapra on Twitter@KWMUScience

Follow Kelsey Proud on Twitter: @KelseyProud  

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Kelsey Proud is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where she earned a Convergence (Multimedia) Journalism degree. She has worked at PBS Interactive in Washington, D.C., MSN UK News in London and is a social media enthusiast. Kelsey feels journalism is truly a public service and hopes her work enhances community and reaches those who need information most. Though she's "from" Chicago, Kelsey has also lived in several different regions of the United States, including periods of time in North Carolina, Ohio, New Mexico and Illinois. Her extended family has roots in Boone and Audrain counties in Missouri, too. She is a wannabe chef and globe trekker, former competitive golfer and band-ie (trumpet), and honorary Missourian.
Véronique LaCapra first caught the radio bug while writing commentaries for NPR affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C. After producing her first audio pieces at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies in N.C., she was hooked! She has done ecological research in the Brazilian Pantanal; regulated pesticides for the Environmental Protection Agency in Arlington, Va.; been a freelance writer and volunteer in South Africa; and contributed radio features to the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. She earned a Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology from the University of California in Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in environmental policy and biology from Cornell. LaCapra grew up in Cambridge, Mass., and in her mother’s home town of Auxerre, France.