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How to pay cash for hospital services?

Oct. 20, 2019, 8:53 p.m.

By Joanne Rodrigues

You don’t have to be sick to get access to hospital or clinic procedures. You can pay cash for hospital services, it’s called self-pay or a self-pay patient. The rates you pay can be quite good if you call around and ask.

You don’t have to be sick to get access to hospital or clinic procedures. You can pay cash for hospital services, it’s called self-pay or a self-pay patient. The rates you pay can be quite good if you price compare.

How do you self-pay for a hospital procedure?

1. Call up a hospital’s financial counselor. You can ask the hospital operator to connect you if you do not know their department extension.
   


2. The hospital financial counselor will give you the self-pay rates for the procedures that you need. In California, self-pay rates can be quite low. If you don’t know what services you need, you should go to an urgent care clinic, which will run you between $90–150 for an appointment. Figure out what you need and ask for CPT or current procedural terminology coding for those procedures. CPT codes are procedure codes that hospitals use to denote what procedures/services you received while there. Hospitals will ask for these codes when providing you estimates for services
   


3. You can compare prices at local hospitals, clinics, labs like Quest Diagnostics LLC and LabCorp LLC, non-hospital radiology or surgery facilities, depending on what you need. By calling around, you can choose the cheapest, best quality option. Generally, non-hospital labs and clinics are cheaper than hospitals for healthcare services.
   

You can go to the hospital or other facility and pay the self-pay rate upon admittance. It can be a great way to save money to self-pay, even if you happen to be insured.

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Pro-Tip 1:
Before you call up the hospital, check out the pricing for the CPT codes that you get on ClinicPriceCheck.com to estimate a good price for those services.