How much does a hospital stay cost?
Across 6,905,762 Medicare inpatient stays in 2024, hospitals charged an average of $93,691 per stay — and were actually paid about $18,728. The gap between those two numbers is most of what you need to understand about hospital bills.
Hospitals don't price a stay by the day
The most-searched version of this question is “cost per day” — but that's generally not how a hospital stay is billed. An admission is typically billed as one bundled figure under a diagnosis group (an MS-DRG): pneumonia is one code, a knee replacement is another, sepsis another. The code — what was treated, and whether there were major complications — sets the payment, not the number of nights. Two stays of similar length can carry very different bills, because the group sets the number.
That's also why any “average cost per day” figure, including ones you'll find on well-known reference sites, can't be applied to your own admission with any accuracy. The useful questions are: which diagnosis group, what does that group typically run, and what will your coverage or the hospital's own policies do to the number.
What common stays actually run: charged vs. paid
Federal claims data publishes, for every diagnosis group, both what hospitals charged and what was actually paid (by Medicare, the patient, and any other coverage combined). These are national averages for Medicare patients in 2024:
| Stay | Hospitals charged (avg) | Actually paid (avg) | Stays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sepsis (severe infection), with major complication MS-DRG 871 |
$90,297 | $18,228 | 578,073 |
| Heart failure, with major complication MS-DRG 291 |
$56,380 | $12,053 | 306,135 |
| Kidney or urinary tract infection, without major complication MS-DRG 690 |
$37,821 | $7,851 | 95,596 |
| Hip or knee replacement, without major complication MS-DRG 470 |
$93,184 | $17,364 | 64,419 |
| COPD (chronic lung disease), with major complication MS-DRG 190 |
$50,592 | $10,597 | 55,536 |
Medicare patients only — commercial insurers negotiate different (often higher) rates, and Medicare's patient mix skews older. Maternity stays are left out for that reason. “Actually paid” is the combined payment from Medicare, the patient, and any other coverage. Source: CMS, Medicare Inpatient Hospitals - by Geography and Service, 2024 data.
Notice the pattern: the charged amounts run several times the paid amounts, consistently. The sticker price on a hospital bill is a starting position, not a settled fact — which matters most if you're uninsured, because you're the only party billed at sticker.
If you're not on Medicare
Commercial insurance negotiates its own rates with each hospital, and those rates are now public — every hospital is federally required to publish them. From those same files, one pattern worth knowing: at the 76 Virginia and North Carolina hospitals whose disclosures we parse, 59.7% of insurance-negotiated rates exceed the same hospital's own cash price for the same procedure (68,955 comparable pairs). If you haven't met your deductible, the cash price can be the lower number — the full picture is in our insurance-vs-cash analysis.
The front door: what the ER visit itself costs
Most unplanned hospital stays begin in the emergency room, and the ER visit carries its own facility fee before any admission. These are the published cash prices at the Virginia and North Carolina hospitals we cover, by severity level:
| Level | Published cash price | Median | Hospitals |
|---|---|---|---|
| ER visit — moderate (Level 3) A problem needing prompt attention but not immediately dangerous — most stitches, moderate infections. |
$340 – $3,720 | $836 | 75 |
| ER visit — high acuity (Level 4) A more serious problem needing urgent evaluation — chest pain workups, significant injuries. |
$426 – $4,376 | $1,228 | 75 |
| ER visit — critical (Level 5) A potentially life-threatening problem — the visits that most often become admissions. |
$516 – $5,069 | $1,682 | 75 |
Facility fees from each hospital's federally required disclosure — physician fees, imaging, labs, and any admission are billed on top. Each level links to prices by hospital and city.
If the bill looks impossible
Three things are worth knowing before treating a hospital bill as final:
- Financial assistance exists at most hospitals. Nonprofit hospitals are required to maintain financial-assistance policies, and many reduce or eliminate bills for patients under income thresholds. Asking costs nothing — our financial-assistance guide covers how the policies work and what to ask for.
- The itemized bill is yours to request. Errors and duplicate charges are common enough that a line-by-line review is worth the ask.
- The published prices are checkable. Every hospital's negotiated rates and cash prices are public — you can look up what your hospital publishes for a given procedure on our comparison pages and ask billing to reconcile the difference.
Methodology: national stay figures are discharge-weighted averages across 767 MS-DRGs from CMS's “Medicare Inpatient Hospitals - by Geography and Service” public use file (2024 data; derived 2026-08-31 — source). Virginia and North Carolina figures are computed from each hospital's federally required machine-readable disclosure at the moment you loaded this page. Not medical advice; where you seek care is a decision for you and your doctor.