{"id":3972,"date":"2011-03-01T12:46:20","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T17:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=3972"},"modified":"2018-08-30T17:26:26","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T22:26:26","slug":"echocardiogram-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2011\/03\/01\/echocardiogram-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;How Much Does A Heart Valve Echocardiogram Cost?&#8221; Asks Ken"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ken just sent me a financial question about the cost of an echocardiogram. He writes, &#8220;Adam &#8211; A few years back, I was diagnosed with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/mitral-valve-regurgitation-symptoms-leaking.php\">moderate mitral valve regurgitation<\/a>. Since then, I lost my job and my health insurance. Lately, I&#8217;ve experienced shortness of breath and fatigue. Do you know how much a heart valve echocardiogram costs? I&#8217;m nervous and curious to see if my mitral valve prolapse has gotten worse? Thanks, Ken&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"Echocardiogram Of The Heart\" src=\"\/Images\/heart-murmur-echocardiogram-insurance.gif\" width=\"322\" height=\"219\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>To help Ken, I just asked Robyn, my wife, for our medical statements from December &#8212; which is when I had my last echocardiogram.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As shown below, we found a statement from Torrance Memorial Hospital for the ultrasound. Similar to most medical bills, it was a tad confusing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"Patient Echocardiogram Bill\" src=\"\/Images\/echo-costs-heart-murmur.jpg\" width=\"525\" height=\"224\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;Total Charges Billed&#8221; for the echocardiogram were $3,405.60. Thankfully, I was not responsible to pay that entire amount. You will notice an &#8220;Account Adjustment&#8221; of $2,593.73. The &#8220;Account Adjustment&#8221; reflects the pre-negotiated, contracted discount that my insurance company passes onto me. So, my total out-of-pocket payment was $811.87&#8230;. Uggh!<\/p>\n<p>Similar to Ken, I have also needed an echocardiogram when I was without health insurance. In that situation, I contacted a local cardiologist and negotiated the fee directly with his office. The total for that echocardiogram was about $900&#8230; Uggh again!<\/p>\n<p>Critical Note: While expensive, echocardiograms are the benchmark for heart valve diagnosis and prognosis. That said, I encourage Ken (or anyone for that matter) to monitor your valvular defect with regular ultrasounds. As we have learned, the alternative can be tragic.<\/p>\n<p>I hope this helps us all learn more about echocardiogram costs before-or-after heart valve surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mitral-regurgitation"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}