Hospital prices for medical procedures used to be secret. Medicare now requires hospitals to post their prices online. Some, but not all, local hospitals have done so. Below is an interesting comparison of pricing for Sleep Medicine services between some local hospitals and us. Local hospitals maintain sleep disorders centers in office buildings separate from the hospital itself. These sleep disorders centers are similar to ours. They use similar equipment, supplies, and personnel. Yet they charge (and get paid by most insurance companies and by you) 2-3 times as much as we do. Our fees are much lower than these nearby hospital outpatient sleep centers. Of course, that means your out of pocket expenses (deductibles, co-pays, co-insurances) are two to three times more when you use these hospitals for your Sleep Medicine health care.

Websites for hospital pricing downloads as spreadsheets:

• Beaumont (accessed 2019/01/14)
• Henry Ford Macomb (accessed 2019/01/14)
• McLaren Macomb (accessed 2019/01/14)

Why do hospitals get away with such inflated charges? There may be many reasons for this:

1.       Hospitals are too powerful for insurance companies to successfully negotiate with them.

2.       Some insurance companies are owned by hospital systems.

3.       Employers (who pay for much of health care) have not known about this difference in pricing.

4.       You (the customer) have not known about this difference in pricing.

5.       Traditionally the government (Medicare and Medicaid) has paid hospitals more for the same services. They have, over the last several years, reduced the difference substantially. However, private insurers have not followed suit.

So, if you want to pay less, a lot less, see us instead of a hospital outpatient sleep center.