C-Section Cost in South Dakota — Compare All Hospitals

8 South Dakota hospitals publish gross charges for c-section (DRG 788). Prices range from $16,870 to $39,279 — roughly $22,409 apart. The cheapest is Prairie Lakes Hospital in Watertown; the most expensive is Madison Regional Health System in Madison. The state average sits at $23,263.

These numbers are list prices — what the hospital bills before any insurance adjustment. Insurance plans negotiate substantial discounts, Medicare and Medicaid pay fixed federal rates, and uninsured patients can usually qualify for a cash-pay discount. But the gross charge still works as a useful benchmark: a hospital that lists c-section at twice the price of another typically negotiates higher rates with insurers too, and quotes more for uninsured patients.

For c-section in South Dakota, the price below is each hospital's gross charge for the facility portion of delivery — your actual out-of-pocket depends on insurance, length of stay, complications, and whether the obstetrician bills separately. Click any hospital name for its full maternity profile, including CMS star rating, patient-experience scores, and (where designated) the CMS Birthing-Friendly Hospital marker — a useful signal of maternity-care quality.

Pricing comes from each hospital's Machine-Readable File (MRF), published under the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule. South Dakota hospitals missing from the list either don't perform c-section in volume, haven't published a usable price for DRG 788 in their most recent MRF, or fell below our data-quality thresholds (we filter out clearly erroneous entries like $0 charges). The list refreshes as hospitals update their files.