Taxpayers Pay Bills Through Medicaid

It takes more than around-the-clock care to keep Baby Ryan alive. It takes a pile of money, too. The tab already has soared far beyond a half-million dollars, not including hefty doctor bills.

The meter started running at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, where Ryan was born prematurely Oct. 27. He was there six weeks. The bill topped $181,000.

Next stop: Legacy Emanuel Children’s Hospital in Portland, where doctors took him off kidney dialysis and removed a blockage from his intestines.

Every day for nearly three months, the hospital tacked $440 in room charges alone on his bill.

X-rays cost more than $3,000, according to hospital billing statements. Drugs and IV solutions topped $52,700.

By the time Ryan went home March 6, his second hospital bill reached more than $258,000.

He’s been readmitted to the Portland hospital five times since then, usually for fever and infection. Once, he had surgery to enlarge a narrowing in his intestines. Those visits cost nearly $68,000 more, not including doctors’ charges.

Washington state taxpayers pay Ryan’s bills through Medicaid, and Darla and Jack Nguyen, his parents, say they don’t track all the costs.

But the company supplying Ryan’s registered nurses 16 hours a day typically charges Medicaid patients $30.50 an hour, an employee said.

That would be just over $3,400 a week, and Ryan’s nursing services aren’t expected to end anytime soon.

Many other costs can’t be tabulated yet.

None of the doctors’ bills are available, but they’re adding up. Ryan sees a kidney specialist, gastrointestinal specialist, pediatrician, neurologist and heart specialist.

The Nguyens also go through dozens of syringes and IV bags, and boxes of latex gloves.

Medicaid pays for Ryan’s home heart monitor, frequent doses of medicine, formula for intravenous feedings and other medical supplies.

Although Sacred Heart and Legacy Emmanuel have billed more than $507,000 for Ryan’s care, the hospitals won’t get nearly that much.

Medicaid usually pays little more than half the charges, health officials say. Hospitals and other providers write off the rest.

For Ryan’s three-month visit at the Portland hospital, for instance, Medicaid paid $106,564 of the $258,220 bill. Medicaid paid just over half the $181,485 bill at Sacred Heart.

Ryan isn’t alone in running up huge Medicaid bills in Washington state. A 3-year-old child ran up the highest tab in the 1994 fiscal year, when the state paid $432,529, state records show.

In each of the 10 most expensive cases last year, the state paid more than $269,000.

, DataTimes MEMO: See related story under the headline: Baby Ryan defies the odds