Viral Illness Cost in Iowa — Compare All Hospitals

Iowa hospitals price viral illness (Medicare DRG 866) anywhere from $4,771 to $32,581 — a $27,810 gap between the cheapest and most expensive option. The cheapest is Waverly Health Center in Waverly; the most expensive is Mercy Medical Center Cedar Rapids (Acute Care) in Cedar Rapids. The state average sits at $14,560.

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 viral illness 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 viral illness 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. Iowa hospitals missing from the list either don't perform viral illness in volume, haven't published a usable price for DRG 866 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.