Having a new son who is home and healthy is, of course, a priceless blessing. That being said, here are the staggering estimates from Liam's and my hospital care:
According to Salem Hospital, an unscheduled C-section with a three day stay runs around $9,152 (that's $600 bucks more than a scheduled c-section!). I stayed for four days; the extra day cost $1,252.
The medical journal Pediatrics estimates that the average per diem cost for special care nursery (NICU) stay to be $1,250. But this is a national figure; care in the Pacific NW is more expensive than most of the country. And if Salem hospital is saying that my very routine extra day costs $1,252, I can guarantee that Intensive Care is going to be a lot more. Liam spent ten days in the NICU before coming home.
All of these price quotes could lead to a discussion about the amount of waste in medicine, but instead I'd like to give kudos to Salem Hospital, and especially the NICU. With the exception of one nurse, Mac and I were extremely satisfied with Liam's care and mine, too, for that matter. People were caring and knowledgeable. They took care of everything and went out of their way to keep us informed. Some of the NICU nurses stopped by to check on Liam even when they were assigned other patients for the day.
My surgery was performed by an OB doc I had never met and knew very little about. Though the surgery was rough (as most emergency C-sections are), the outcome was as good as it could be and my neat little row of sub-cutaneous stitches were absolutely beautiful. (sub-cutaneous stitches are well known to cause the least irritation and have the best cosmetic outcome, but they take a lot longer to put in, which is why staples, regular stitches and tape are more popular closing methods. I don't know if the sub-Q stitches are Dr. W's standard or if they were a professional courtesy).
Needless to say, we will be paying every cent of our deductible this year, but in the end, we'll be happy to do it.
Yeah, everyone gets staples for C-section closure around here, which, as a fumble-fingered med student, I much prefer to put in and take out. I've found a lot of patients actually complain the most about the Steri-strips causing irritation, did they bother you?
ReplyDeleteJoel, P didn't have steristrips. Her incision had a gauze pad with tape covering it. All her sutures were inside.
ReplyDeleteI did learn that my doc and the doc that did my surgery do sub-Q stitches for all of their patients. More kudos for Salem! I, too, have heard steri-strips are awful. I just had a bandage that came off the second day and from then on, there wasn't any covering/tape/etc.
ReplyDeleteI feel less and less clever all the time about not having medical insurance... Shouldn't it be enough to have an M.D. cousin in Oregon?
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