US patients charged for ‘hospital facility fees’ – even if they don’t set foot in one

Facility fees are often impossible to anticipate or estimate – they can range ‘from $0 to thousands’. Photograph: Darwin Brandis/Getty Images

Hospitals are gobbling up doctor’s offices – and they’re bringing higher prices to patients when they do, even if a patient never sets foot on a hospital campus.

Enter the “hospital facility fee”: a charge hospitals can add to bills from doctors’ offices, outpatient surgical clinics and diagnostics centers that they own, rebranding them as “outpatient hospital departments”, even if the facility is miles from a hospital campus.