Preemies

Average cost of NICU per day?

My babies have been in the NICU two weeks tomorrow for the normal keeping warm, feeding and growing of a 35 week preemie and get to come home tomorrow as well-yay!!!

Does anyone know a round about figure the NICU is per day?  I'm dreading the bill even though we have insurance and critical care insurance on top of that.

 

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Re: Average cost of NICU per day?

  • Don't know, but I recently got a letter from my insurance company telling me they were billed for about $86,000 for a seven week stay.
  • imageFisMom:
    Don't know, but I recently got a letter from my insurance company telling me they were billed for about $86,000 for a seven week stay.

    Wow that's pretty darn cheap.  My hospital stay alone (7 day total) was billed out at $35,000.  I should be getting our son's NICU bill any day now....I am very interested to see what it is.   

    Three losses in 2009; Boy/Girl twins born in 2010 image
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  • My hospital stay (4 days) was $27k. DD is on both my husband's and my insurance policies. The $86k was from DH's insurance company. It's possible that it was only for the period of time after the 30 days DD was automatically covered by me.
  • I remember LO's NICU room and board were around 11,000/day.  That was just the hospital part...the neonatologists were over 1,000/day on top of that.  I do remember the Special Care nursery was a lot cheaper once he was well enough to go there, maybe half the cost.  

  • It was a lot for 35 day stay.  It seems like my insurance was paying out over $60,000 to the hospital.  Luckily, we qualified for K01 Medicaid since he was in the hospital over 30 days.  

    As well, with my Labor and Delivery bill, it has suddenly became difficult to pay for this bill since we are paying for babysitter plus other baby expenses.  So the hospital sent me an application for financial assistance, and we are applying for it (they said if approved that it would cover 40-60% of the labor and delivery expense if we are approved based on our income). 

    We are also on a WIC program that gives us checks for food for Breastfeeding and Baby Formula.  I am really glad that I talked to the social workers at the hospital before my LO left and got as much information on any programs that could help us out. 

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  • We've been getting copies of the bills for Andrew - his NICU is approx. 2300/day for "room and board."  Of course, every xray, blood draw, u/s, and I'm sure specialist visit is additional.  I've seen submissions for $113K and $48K already to my insurance...and I'm sure there are lots more!
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  • we paid about $60k for a 26 day stay in the special care nursery (3 days of that was in the actual NICU). he was mainly a feeder/grower.
  • I think ours worked out to be about $11,000 per day.  They were astronomical after 42 days.  We ended up paying about $1500 out of pocket that then got cut in 1/2 because we paid it all at once.  It literally took a year to get all the insurance stuff ironed out though.  They were awful about paying often saying that things were double billed, but it was for the other baby.  The other thing was the neonatologists in our NICU were "out of network" even though the hospital was in network so I had to write all kinds of appeals.  The insurance said I should have "brought the boys to a covered neonatologist."  Yep I'll just check them out of the NICU each day to be seen by a neo 10 min. away.  Ridiculous.

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  • I think we were told that the average for basic NICU was around $7,000/day.  DS was a feeder/grower for 27 days and his bill was around $100,000.
  • our one hospital was $1,500 for a day the other was $3,000


    Rowen Alexander born 10 weeks early 1/28/07

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  • My hospital bill for me was $15,000 and DD NICU bill for 12 days was $25,000. I hope its not to bAD for you. Yay for coming home tomorrow.
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  • At the total cost of about 3/4 of a million dollars (literally) for our DD's 96 days in the NICU, it broke down to about $7,800/day.  This also includes three surgeries along with the usual room and board, etc.  I just got the first few bills for our DS's 5 day stay in the Special Care Nursery, and it was around $35,000, which also breaks down to around $7,000/day.  That does not make sense, since he was just feeding, growing, and dealing with jaundice.  Wow.  Thank God for insurance!
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  • So happy for you ...you get to take your babies home tomorrow.  I told the doc today; must send us home friday....or I'm taking them AMA.  (no joke) and they may not believe this RN mama, until she walks right out that door with 2 girls.  They are very ready to go.....

    I'm worried about our bill.  2 weeks for my bill....and....almost 5 weeks for the girls. 

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  • My DS's 48 day NICU stay was 250,000.

     Eta- that was just for the hospital portion. The Neo doctors charged 450.00 a day, except for the first day, which was billed at 3,500. Once we moved off NEO's care and to a Ped (around 4 weeks), they charged 150.00 a day. The childrens hospital group, who rounded when my Ped was not in house charged 250 a day. Plus, we had misc. bills from radiologists, G.I. and the eye doctors. Thank goodness for insurance, although we still had to pay a lot out of pocket.

  • Our LO 'cost' about $350,000 for 62 days in the hospital.  She was in the high level care facility for about half of the time, which cost more.  That includes my delivery too since it was at the same hospital.  Her NICU doctors billed $1500 a day for the high level and about $700 for the step down nursery.  I think the hospital bill (xray, RT, bed, lab work, etc) was $235,000.  Our insurance paid a lot less but the bills were still crazy.. 
  • Ours was 200K for a 49 day stay.
  • Aidens total for everything came out to $16,500 per day. Including Neonatologists, X-rays, Labs, medication, hospital stay etc. 

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  • She was in for 138 days, total bill was $1,873,958    so about $13,500/day - doesn't count the two surgeries either. It's absolutely crazy. Thank goodness for insurance and SSI, our out of pocket was $200.
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  • We were billed different amounts based off of how sick Evan was. The first few weeks where he had his own nurse at his bedside 24/7....those were a LOT more expensive than the feeder grower days when he was in a crib. I can't remember how much though. His total bill for 13 weeks was close to 900,000 I think if I'm remembering right.
  • After reading your postings, I am so thankful I live in Canada.  3 preemies (33, 31 and 28 weeks) and NO bills.
    Mom to 4 boys under age 6 Evan, Darren, Liam & Isaac
  • imageMrsDeLaVara:
    Our LO 'cost' about $350,000 for 62 days in the hospital.  She was in the high level care facility for about half of the time, which cost more.  That includes my delivery too since it was at the same hospital.  Her NICU doctors billed $1500 a day for the high level and about $700 for the step down nursery.  I think the hospital bill (xray, RT, bed, lab work, etc) was $235,000.  Our insurance paid a lot less but the bills were still crazy.. 

    THIS! LO had a 63 day NICU stay and her grand total for the hospital alone was $308,000. On  top f that, the neonatologists' bill was an additional $49,000 or so. This was for a normal NICU course with no surgeries and fairly basic tests...I can't imagine what it would have been if she had had any complications that required surgical intervention. That did not include my delivery and hospital stay.

    That being said, LO was in the top NICU in the state, the rooms were semi private (only 1 or 2 babies to each room) and the staff was amazing! Still, I'm REALLY glad insurance covered most of it!

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