The same colonoscopy can carry a price more than two and a half times as much, depending on whose building it happens in. In Massachusetts, commercial insurers paid an average of $2,527 in 2023 for a colonoscopy with polyp removal performed in a hospital outpatient department, compared with $884 to $963 when the identical procedure was done in an ambulatory surgery center or a physician's office, according to the state's Health Policy Commission.
That gap, worth more than $1,500 per procedure, resurfaced this week in a STAT investigation published October 5 on how hospital and drug prices are straining employers and workers. STAT reported that insurers would have paid almost two-thirds less had those hospital-based colonoscopies been done in an independent setting.
