Hanna Utkin: Shocked by Hidden Hospital Fees

Accidents can happen in an instant, and for many families that moment of panic can turn into unexpected financial stress. When Hanna Utkin’s four-month-old son fell off his highchair as she was adjusting it, she did what any parent would do: she rushed to get help. “He just fell off and he hit his head,” she recalled. “I was trying to call my pediatrician, and she wasn’t answering. She’s a part of the Torrance Memorial network, and they have a big hospital, so I went there.”

At the hospital, the staff directed Hanna to the emergency room. “They admitted us, and after waiting for quite a long time the doctor saw us for like three minutes and was just like ‘Yeah, he seems fine.’ So, we went home…They had us stay for 30 minutes for observation and then a nurse discharged us and we went home,” she said.

A few weeks later, Hanna received a bill. “It was like $250, not too bad, which I kind of expected. I paid the bill and thought I was done,” she said. But months later, another bill arrived for $300. “I was like ‘What are you guys talking about? I already paid you for this.’ And they’re like ‘Oh, that was just for the doctor, this is the facility fee,’” she said.

Facility fees are charges hospitals add to cover the cost of maintaining their buildings and equipment. Patients often see them on bills for outpatient or emergency care, even if they receive only a brief consultation. Hanna was shocked to learn she owed hundreds more for a visit that lasted only a few minutes.

When hospital staff later questioned her decision to go to the ER, she pushed back. “They told me to go to the emergency room. They didn’t tell me to go to urgent care,” she said. “If it wasn’t an emergency room type of visit, they should’ve told me to go somewhere else.”

After several calls and letters, Hanna tried to negotiate. The charges were eventually dropped, but the experience left her frustrated. “I had insurance, I was in network,” she said. “In no way can I justify the amount of money that they charged us for a very, very short consultation.”

Since then, Hanna has changed how she seeks care for herself and her son. “I haven’t even thought about the hospital,” she said. “The hospital is just not somewhere you want to go even if you were in a bad situation.”

Reflecting on the experience, Hanna calls for policy change. “Eliminate facility fees,” she said. “If I’m going to a nail salon and there’s a nail tech to do your nails and they suddenly put in a facility fee for the chair I had to sit on and the curing machine, it would be ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense that I have to pay for walking inside of a building. There should be one price… It doesn’t make sense to come in and have any range of estimate from $10 to $10,000.”

For Hanna, the issue is about fairness. “I hope people know that these fees are something recent. Not everybody does it. It’s just something that you should be more aware of because it’s a double price. If I had to pay $100 and then $150 maybe it wouldn’t really matter, but because they wanted me to pay $600 total. I’m not happy about that.”

Facility fees are increasingly common across the country, often catching families like Hanna’s by surprise. Greater price transparency in health care billing and same service same price payment reforms are imperative to ensure that patients know what they’re paying for, and receive a fair and affordable price.