Maryland patients paid an average of more than $10,000 for a hospital stay last year — a 6.3 percent increase over the previous year and higher than the national average, state officials said.
However, the markup in Maryland’s hospitals — that is, the difference between hospital costs and what the hospital charges — is the lowest in the nation, according to a recent report from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission.
The markup in Maryland hospitals averaged 21 percent, compared with 174 percent nationally, according to recent data from the American Hospital Association.
Maryland patients paid $10,038 in fiscal 2007, up from $9,440 in fiscal 2006, the commission reported. The national average increase is 5.3 percent.
The commission, created in 1971, sets hospital rates in an effort to contain costs and maintain equity in payment.
Maryland’s all-payer system builds into rates the cost of uncompensated care, so all patients pay the same rates. Without that, hospitals must mark up their charges to cover shortfalls from the uncompensated care, according to the HSCRC.
HSCRC Chairman Donald Young said in a statement that Maryland’s increase in hospital stay costs should be brought below the national average.
“We cannot allow the unfavorable results of 2007 to become a trend,” he said.
