Trauma Center Activation Fees: The new profit center for Emergency Rooms
Trauma Center Activation Fees, also called Trauma Alert Fees, are often exorbitant fees charged to Emergency Room patients with traumatic injuries. Often the injury is incredibly mild. Maybe it involves a joint sprain or a few stitches. The additional ER fee, however, is often anything but mild. Patients may leave the ER with an additional Trauma Activation Fee of tens of thousands of dollars. Insurance often hesitates to pay such a fee.
Google “Trauma Alert Fees” or “Trauma Center Activation Fees” and see the horror of this latest scam.
In training I was at a trauma center. When a true trauma came in it was a machine at work. The patient was talked to, evaluated, clothes cut off, foley in after rectal exam, total body exam, flipped over, spine evaluation, flipped back over and off to X-rays or surgery- literally in less than 5 minutes. 8-10 people in the room. No way a normal er CPT can capture and appropriately reimburse that. So the extra code. And has it been abused? Of course. Every rule that limits doctors that doctors hate comes from one place and one place only – doctors abusing and pushing and needing to be limited.