Fluid Around the Lung Cost in Montana — Compare All Hospitals

5 Montana hospitals list a gross charge for fluid around the lung under the federal price-transparency rule, with quoted prices spanning $7,180 to $54,205. The cheapest is Community Hospital of Anaconda in Anaconda; the most expensive is St Peters Health in Helena. The state average sits at $19,622.

What's published is the gross charge — the starting point, not what you'd actually owe. 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 fluid around the lung at twice the price of another typically negotiates higher rates with insurers too, and quotes more for uninsured patients.

You usually don't choose a hospital during an urgent fluid around the lung admission. This page is for the planning side: patients with chronic conditions weighing their options, caregivers picking ahead of time, or employers comparing in-network facilities. Click any hospital name for its full quality profile — CMS overall star rating, mortality and readmission rates, patient-experience scores. When two nearby hospitals look similar on quality, the one with lower published charges is the safer default for routine medical admissions.

Pricing comes from each hospital's Machine-Readable File (MRF), published under the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule. Montana hospitals missing from the list either don't perform fluid around the lung in volume, haven't published a usable price for DRG 186 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.