Fluid Around the Lung Cost in South Carolina — Compare All Hospitals

South Carolina hospitals price fluid around the lung (Medicare DRG 186) anywhere from $27,997 to $55,677 — a $27,680 gap between the cheapest and most expensive option. The cheapest is Tidelands Waccamaw Community Hospital in Murrells Inlet; the most expensive is Anmed Health in Anderson. The state average sits at $45,114.

Gross charges are list prices, not what most patients pay. 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. South Carolina 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.