Hospital charges new parents $1,420 for 2 hours of babysitting

Talk about a surprise! Writer Alex Cortes and his wife, Kate, were exhausted after a long labor and the birth of their daughter Penelope. So when a nurse asked if they wanted the baby to spend a couple of hours in the nursery while they rested, they quickly agreed.

Cortes later received a hospital bill with a $1,420 nursery charge. That got his attention, especially because $1,400 is the equivalent of the couple’s monthly rent.

“Had she told us at the time that the nursery stay would cost several hundred dollars, we would have kept Penelope with us,” Cortes wrote in a column posted on STAT.

The new dad called the hospital to ask what, exactly, was included in the charge. He was told that a stay in the nursery cost $710 an hour.

“At home, we usually pay $13 to $15 an hour,” he wrote. “If the hospital babysitter was to work full time at the rate Kate and I paid, she or he would make more than $1.4 million a year!”

It was an expensive lesson. “We need to be more proactive about asking what various hospital services cost – especially those that are elective,” Cortes wrote.

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