After holding his newborn son for the first time at a Utah hospital last month, a man found a strange charge on his bill: US$39.35.
The man, Ryan Grassley, thought the charge, which appeared to be for holding his baby to his wife’s chest, was a bit of a joke.
The charge was listed as “skin to skin after C-sec.”
Photo: AP/Ryan Grassley
So he did not take it too seriously when he posted a picture of the bill on Reddit.
However, the story quickly gained steam: As of Wednesday, it had prompted more than 11,600 comments from other users since being posted on Monday evening and vaulted high up on the Internet’s “front page,” — as Reddit calls itself — by more than 6,000 upvotes.
The Reddit post touched a nerve with people because it seemed to underscore a national frustration with unexpected hospital fees and arcane medical billing.
Grassley, 37, of Spanish Fork, Utah, wrote that his son was born on Sept. 4. While his wife was delivering the baby, he was asked if they would like to hold their newborn after the procedure at Utah Valley Hospital in Provo.
Grassley held his son between his wife’s neck and chest, while a nurse took pictures. For this, the description on the bill seemed to suggest, he was charged the fee.
Janet Frank, a spokeswoman for Utah Valley Hospital, said in a statement that the charge was not for skin-to-skin contact, a practice that hospitals use to increase bonding and breast-feeding, among other things.
Frank said that the charge was incurred because an extra nurse was needed in the operating room while Grassley and his wife held their newborn son and that the nurse was necessary to ensure that “both mom and baby remain safe.”
“Only in the case of a C-section birth is an additional nurse brought into the operating room,” the statement said.
Once Grassley saw that the Reddit thread was gaining momentum, he clarified that he and his wife knew the cost for the delivery would be steep.
The total charges listed on the bill, including the C-section, came to US$13,280.49 before payments and adjustments.
“We knew what we were signing up for and have some money saved up,” he wrote, adding: “Everyone involved in the process was great, and we had a positive experience. We just got a chuckle out of seeing that on the bill.”
Frank would not initially say whether the hospital itself had set the price for the nurse that Grassley was charged for.
After repeated inquiries, Frank confirmed by e-mail that the hospital did set the charge, which was determined as “a function of nursing time.”
“We are actively evaluating how better to define the service as it appears on a patient’s bill,” she said.
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