Friday, August 7, 2009

How Much Does it Cost to NOT Have a Baby?

I got the itemized statement from the hospital for my recent stay in the mail today. I always think that these things are so interesting. Hopefully you do, too. Or else you are about to be bored.

OB Room for 1 night: $679.00

Laboratory chemistry: $661.00

Laboratory hematology: $85.75

Laboratory urology: $45.50

Ultrasound: $671.75

Drugs: $352.30

Triage room: $257.75

TOTAL: $2,753.05

I expect that our portion of this bill, after insurance, will be approximately $275, due to our 10% coinsurance.

I also expect that we may receive a bill from the on-call doctor that saw me before the doctor from my practice arrived in the morning. And perhaps a bill from the ultrasound technician.

I also got seven (!) separate letters from the maternity nurse assigned to my "case" as part of the maternity care program that our insurance company sponsors. One of them was information about preterm labor. It indicated that there is no clear cause found for half of all preterm labors. But, one factor that increased a woman's risk of preterm labor was exposure to radiation. Which got me wondering about whether or not the x-rays that I had done on April 1st after my car accident could have been a contributing factor here. I called her to ask her to check on this, but I had to leave a voice mail. I hope that she does call me back with more information!

Another contributing factor for preterm labor is heavy lifting of 26.5 lbs or more on a frequent basis. Guess how much Connor weighs? About 27-28 lbs! I haven't been allowed to pick him up since I was in the hospital, but before that, I was picking him up and carrying him all over the place. Oh well.

1 comment:

Julie said...

The nurse did call me back, and the radiation studies were for significantly more radiation than would be received during one set of x-rays, so that probably wasn't the cause.