Study: Winthrop Seventh Most Expensive Hospital in NY State

Mineola-based Winthrop-University Hospital is one of the most expensive hospitals in New York State according to a study by NerdWallet Health, a healthcare transparency startup.

According to the study, the 50 largest hospitals of 161 were ranked by calculating the total number of Medicare patient discharges per year, then which of the 50 had the lowest and highest prices for each of the 100 most common medical procedures, and then summed the number of times that each hospital had the lowest price. The data is for services billed for Medicare patients.

The study found that Winthrop was the least affordable for cardiac catheterization, chest pain and kidney damage requiring dialysis.

The least affordable hospital in New York State was found to be Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. The least affordable hospital on Long Island was Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center in Patchogue. The most affordable hospital in New York was Our Lady of Lourdes Memorial Hospital in Binghampton.

“Winthrop’s costs and charges for a broad spectrum of services are based upon negotiations with both CMS (Medicare and Medicaid) and the various insurance carriers who pay us for those services,” Winthrop Vice President J. Edmund Keating said in a statement. “There are many complex factors that contribute to determining the charges of these procedures, including, but not limited to, level of severity (or case mix), reimbursement rates, and the fact that Winthrop is a major teaching hospital, which entitles us to higher reimbursement to help subsidize the cost of medical education. The methodology of this latest survey does not make clear whether any of these factors were taken into consideration.”

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