Overcharging Common in Hospital EDs, Says Study

​Payment for emergency department (ED) services can vary by as much as 12 times compared with what Medicare would pay for the same procedure, according to a May 30, 2017, original investigation in JAMA-Internal Medicine. The authors conducted a retrospective analysis on Medicare billing records from 2,707 U.S. hospitals for 2013. They found that different EDs charged anywhere from 1.0 to 12.6 times what Medicare pays for specific services. These increased charges appeared more frequently when services were performed by an ED physician than when performed by an internal medicine physician.