
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 23, 1993                   TAG: 9306230082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Short

ORGAN PRICES VARY WILDLY; STUDY ASKS WHY

The price of procuring organs for transplants varies wildly for no clear reason, said a researcher who found that charges to obtain kidneys ranged from $682 to $87,629 in 1988.

"Whenever you have that kind of variation, it leads you to ask why," said Roger W. Evans, Mayo Clinic researcher and author of a report in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

He analyzed 28.7 percent of all U.S. transplants in 1988, the latest year for which prices for all organs were available from procurement agencies.

In many cases, the price on a patient's hospital bill was much greater than what an organ procurement agency charged, Evans said.

Some transplant hospitals marked up procurement costs by 200 percent before billing patients, said Evans, head of health sciences research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. His report didn't name hospitals.

Evans said "that reflects typical cost-shifting that goes on in the hospital setting."

Cost-shifting occurs when hospitals make up money lost from patients who can't pay or pay fully by boosting prices for other services.

"The question is whether that's appropriate," Evans said.

by CNB