The price of having a baby, getting a knee repaired or having an appendix removed at Denver- area hospitals rose on average between 18 percent and 42 percent between 2002 and 2004, according to a new report.
The average charge for a baby delivery increased 18 percent to almost $7,000 at area hospitals, while repairing knee tendons or a broken ankle was up 42 percent to $31,000.
The Colorado Health & Hospital Association report, “2004 Hospital Charges & Average Length of Stay,” charts charges that continue to rise at double-digit rates.
At the same time, overall inflation hovered around 2.7 percent in 2004. Health care spending overall rose 8.2 percent, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change.
“Technology continues to be expensive, and hospitals have to stay up with the cost of technology,” said Marty Arizumi, the hospital association’s vice president of public affairs.
The charges also have increased to absorb the cost of caring for the uninsured and because of low reimbursement rates from the state Medicaid program and federal Medicare, Arizumi said.
Hospitals have long complained that reimbursement rates from Medicaid, which covers poor children and the disabled, and Medicare, which serves the elderly, don’t cover the cost of care.
The two government programs covered about 40 percent of all patient days at Denver-area hospitals in 2004, the report said.
The trend in Colorado is being repeated in hospitals around the country, said Robert Blendon, a Harvard University professor of health policy.
And hospitals nationwide tend to cite the same factors as driving costs upward, he said.
“There are huge pressures to keep up with technology” and to upgrade or build attractive new hospitals, Blendon said.
“The question is, will there be anyone left in the state who can pay for it?” Blendon said.
Hospital costs may soon replace prescription-drug spending as the driving force behind the soaring cost of health care, Blendon said.
For 2005, hospital-care costs are projected to rise to $588 billion nationwide, a 53 percent jump from 1999, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Those higher charges are increasingly being paid by the state or the federal government.
Altogether, government insurance paid nearly half of all hospital bills that were actually paid in 2004 in Colorado, according to the hospital association.
Two hospitals, Rose Medical Center and Littleton Adventist, bucked the overall trend and reported that they reduced charges for childbirth.
At Littleton Adventist, the drop was 10 percent.
That’s no accident, said Kris Hakanson, the hospital’s marketing director. “It’s something we’ve been working on” since last year, when the same statewide report revealed Littleton Adventist’s birth charges were on the high side.
The cost reduction was only for patients paying their own bills for labor and delivery, said Dan Janicak, the hospital’s chief financial officer. That category accounted for only about 10 percent of the hospital’s 1,400 non- cesarean deliveries last year.
“We haven’t cut any services,” he said. “We just absorbed it into our operating margins.”
The hospital association report charts costs, length of stay and cost trends for 35 of the most common procedures and illnesses at 68 hospital across the state.
In addition to costs, the report reveals some of the day-to-day workings of Colorado hospitals:
In 2004, 429 fewer people died after surgery in than in 2000.
The greatest number of patients – 80,514 – are admitted to hospitals for surgery on Tuesday – also the day the most procedures are performed.
The most popular day for patients to be released from the hospital is Friday, with 83,290 going home that day in 2004.
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-820-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
