Kelli Reardon undergoes an MRI twice a year to screen for breast cancer, a measure she said she must take to protect her health. Her mother died of the disease at age 48, putting Reardon at higher risk, and Reardon has dense breast tissue, which makes it harder to detect a growth through a mammogram.<\/p>\n
When Reardon moved from Alabama to North Carolina, she had little choice but to switch from having the screening done at an imaging center to having it done at a hospital.<\/p>\n
Then she saw how much higher the charges were. At first, Reardon thought it was an error: \u201cThey made a mistake with billing,\u201d she said. \u201cThey accidentally added a zero.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a mistake.<\/p>\n
In this installment of InvestigateTV and KFF Health News\u2019 \u201cCostly Care\u201d series, Caresse Jackman, InvestigateTV\u2019s national consumer investigative reporter, and Jamie Grey, director of investigations, explore how the type of medical facility where a patient seeks care can affect the cost of that care \u2014 particularly when that facility is a hospital.<\/p>\n
KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\nUSE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n