A hospital death is frequently an unavoidable consequence of a patient s medical condition. Hospitals and physicians may do everything right and still the patient can die. However, after taking the significant risk factors available to PHC4 into account, there are differences in patient outcomes that exist among hospitals. This report also includes the average hospital charge for each of the 21 medical and surgical treatment categories. While charges are what the hospital reports on the billing form, they may not accurately represent the amount a hospital receives in payment for the services it delivers.
Hospitals usually receive less in actual payments than the listed charge.
Charges do represent a benchmark as negotiations between hospitals and insurers regarding payment generally begin with the charge figure. And hospital charges are used almost universally by those attempting to assess the costs of health care. Until a better method is developed, hospital charges represent a consistent, while imperfect, way to discuss the relative costs of health care. It is important to note that the regional figures provided above are aggregate only and cannot be applied to individual hospitals or individual average DRG charges to calculate actual payment figures. This is due to substantial variation in hospital charges from hospital to hospital and from insurance product line to product line.