Open Letter to Swedish

Dear Swedish Cherry Hill Hospital,

This is an open letter to you since you have no e-mail or web form to communicate with you.

First of all I'd like to thank you for admitting me to the ER on January the 6th. I thought I broke my rib and was in a lot of pain. I didn't have any surgery done and just had a CT and XRays to make sure that there was no internal damage. Thankfully I didn't break anything and by now the pain is gone.

A few days ago I got your bill and I honestly thought it was some sort of a mistake. Your fees for admitting me and doing two diagnostic procedures were over $11,000? All of that, by the way, was not broken out into any items but just was one line.

I think from my initial wait until the time a cab picked me up I spent about 3 hours at the ER. It was hard to believe that being that would cost me $60 a minute. Yes, this is not a miscalculation: it's $60 a minute, $1 a second, north of $3600 an hour.

I have been to the ER before and I usually expect a bill for $1000-$1500, but an order of magnitude difference with no warning from anyone?

And here is the tragedy of US Medical system. No one talks to anyone about options or pricing meanwhile these kinds of fees can seriously bankrupt an ordinary US Citizen. The second part of the tragedy is that once my insurance got a hold of the bill I instantly got a $9,000 reduction. I am almost certain that if I wasn't "represented by Premera" this discount would be pretty hard to get.

Just to add insult to injury it turns out that your radiologist and the physician will all bill me separately on top of the $11,000.

This is not an attack on any of the personnel that helped me. They all seemed to be great people. I come from a family of doctors and my mother is currently an MD working in urgent care - I know MDs are great people that care! This is some honest feedback to the way you run your business.

The business is being run on a principle of surprise charges. How does anyone know that going to your ER will result in $100, $1,000 or $10,000 in fees? There is absolutely nothing on your website that gives any indication of any of the fees you might try to charge me. All the costs and fees are carefully hidden. If you don't have a big insurance company on your side you could really be screwed.

Can you do something about it? I believe so! I work in software and some very complicated procedures can be grouped together and priced at a predictable level that makes sure that your business operates and patients don't get $11,000 bills they don't expect.