Late last year I had a sharp pain in my left side and went to the emergency room at Seton. I was in the ER a total of 90 minutes and really received no treatment other than being told to go home and given a prescription for some pain medication.I was simply shocked when I received a copy of the bill for this 10 minutes of 'medical advice'. It was over $11,000 for Seton's ER alone and another $1,000 for actually speaking to the doctors. The CT Scan alone was in excess of $7,900 when I had an almost identical procedure performed literally across the street a few weeks later at the Heart Hospital of Austin for under $200.\r
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I thought there must be some kind of mistake - less than 90 minutes in the ER, one quick CT scan, sent home without anything other than a standard prescription for $12,000+ and asked for a detailed invoice. I was told that even though there was a single CT scan performed (and obtained a copy of the records from the radiology department - where there was only one image), they were able to see both my kidney and my bladder (two separate body parts!) on the same scan and they were entitled to charge *twice* at $3,400 a time because the radiologist spent two or three seconds looking at two spots on the CT scan image instead of one - I kid you not, that was the explanation for how they justified charging for two separate CT scans when only a single image was obtained.\r
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I don't think I have ever received less value for money for anything in my life. I would never voluntarily use Seton's services again - $12,000+ for a dirty (as in disgusting) ER, 10 minutes of medical attention with nothing beyond 'go home and see if everything is ok in a couple of days', and charging an all ready *extremely* overinflated CT scan price twice (which at the end of the day was only glanced at by the doctor who sent me home) because there was more than one part of the body captured on the image.\r
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BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE!
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