Utah father Ryan Grassley posted a photo of a bill he received from UtahValleyHospital in Provo for the delivery of his child via caesarean section on Sept. 4. Mr. Grassley jokingly characterized the $39.95 charge as a fee “to hold my baby after he was born.”
UtahValleyHospital issued a statement in response to the post, explaining the skin-to-skin contact in the operating room following a C-section requires the presence of an additional nurse for supervision to ensure both mother and child safety.
Canadian doula Meaghan Grant, a committee member of Toronto-based SunnybrookHospital, concurred with the hospital’s statement in a Facebook post.
“Nurses are the LARGEST budget item [at a hospital]. They don’t appear out of nowhere … their time and presence are valuable,” Ms. Grant wrote. Instead of “screaming about the big bad hospital system,” Ms. Grant urged people to celebrate the hospital for allowing skin-to-skin contact to mothers in the OR at all.
But a number of healthcare organizations have disagreed with the charge.
Various New Jersey-based hospital systems and health plans told NJ.com the itemized charge was foreign to their billing practices. The 11 hospitals within West Orange-based RWJBarnabas Health and five hospitals in Morristown-based Atlantic Health System said they do not assign a separate charge for skin-to-skin time in the operating room post C-section, according to the article.
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey spokesperson Tom Vincz told NJ.com he thought the charge was suspicious because it lacked a correlating current procedural terminology code.
Medical bills typically contain CPT codes to uniformly designate and bill for services. The system is maintained by the American Medical Association.
More articles on revenue cycle management issues:
How proactive thinking improves your revenue cycle health
20 must-reads for hospital CFOs
8 things to know about Aleppo hospital bombings, human rights violations in Syria
