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Costs of care for each condition varied widely. Care for a typical patient with congestive heart failure averaged $7,114 and could range from $1,522 to $18,927, depending on which of the 3,146 hospitals discharged the patient. Cost of care for a typical patient with pneumonia averaged $7,040 and varied from $1,897 to $15,829 per hospitalization among 3,152 facilities.
"Compared with hospitals in the lowest-cost quartile [one-fourth] for congestive heart failure care, hospitals in the highest-cost quartile had higher quality-of-care scores (89.9 percent vs. 85.5 percent) and lower mortality [death] for congestive heart failure (9.8 percent vs. 10.8 percent)," the authors write. "For pneumonia, the converse was true. Compared with low-cost hospitals, high-cost hospitals had lower quality-of-care scores (85.7 percent vs. 86.6 percent) and higher mortality for pneumonia (11.7 percent vs. 10.9 percent)."
Hospitals with lower costs had similar or slightly higher 30-day readmission rates (24.7 percent for congestive heart failure and 17.9 percent for pneumonia) when compared with higher-cost hospitals (22 percent for congestive heart failure and 17.3 percent for pneumonia). However, patients initially seen in lower-cost hospitals still incurred lower overall costs of care over six months compared with patients initially seen in higher-cost hospitals ($12,715 vs. $18,411 for congestive heart failure and $10,143 vs. $15,138 for pneumonia).
