Hospital Costs Vary While Quality is Indiscernable

The Herald Tribune article explains how to evaluate a hospital for its quality and cost of its services.

An appendix, the mysterious little organ in the abdomen, is much the same in everyone. So why would it cost, on average, $61,737 to remove it at one hospital, and $17,437 at another? The phenomenon goes beyond surgery, even to common ailments that virtually every hospital sees.

Hospitals base those charges on their internal costs -- the price for bandages, the salaries of nurses, and so on -- and on what they think their local market can support, said David Verinder, chief financial officer at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.