Nonprofit, government hospitals charge more than for-profit facilities for brain imaging: study

• "This one service gives us a lens to observe hospital's strategic pricing behavior because this is a lever they can pull to make money," Ge Bai, a Johns Hopkins professor and study co-author, told Axios.

What they found: Non-profits, teaching hospitals and hospitals in more affluent areas tended to have higher markups, a lower proportion of Medicare patients and a higher likelihood of employing clinicians in MRI departments.

• The median commercial price of an MRI brain scan for all hospitals is $1,900, the study found.
• For-profit hospitals in the study charged a median price of $1,509, while nonprofit and government hospitals charged a median $1,938 and $2,149, respectively. Medicare pays $400 or less for the procedure, depending on the facility type.
• Rural hospitals charged more for brain MRIs than urban hospitals in the same health system by $363.
• The findings suggest that hospitals negotiate higher prices with commercial payers when they have market power in a region or area.