[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

When hospitals bill the third party payers, your stay has to fit into one of hundreds of DRG's (Diagnostic Related Groups), which in turn determines reimbursement. Attending physicians are asked to put down every diagnosis their patient had, then specialized "coders" arrange them in the order that gleans the most dollars. The primary reason for the hospital stay should be listed first, but these people take a lot of "poetic license" The last I talked to my ex-partners, adding COVID to the list of diagnoses was worth an additional $13,000 to the hospital, and that's a medium size hospital in Central NY, so probably more in a big city hospital where the reimbursement for each DRG is higher due to higher overhead costs. So the short answer to your question is paid by insurers or Medicare to hospitals for listing COVID as a diagnosis.
There is an anecdote circulating in the medical community that a young victim of a fatal motorcycle crash was brought to the hospital DOA. They tested the corpse for COVID and then put that as a diagnosis. True or not, I have no idea, but certainly not outside the realm of possibility. My daughter in law got sick just 3 days ago with abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, possible bleeding and a BP of 60/20. The first thing Wake Forrest medical did was test for COVID!!! What a joke!!! there are a lot of things I would like to know from lab testing in this case, but COVID status is not at the top of the list. But it's clear that it's worthwhile for them to test EVERYONE that comes to the hospital, and it is not solely to isolate the positive patients

And it is "CLEAR" to me that the Hospital did the RIGHT / CORRECT thing to test for CV. I hope that they would since we are in a WORLDWIDE pandemic and people in the US are the #1 spreaders of the disease. A more infectious and deadly variant has taken hold all over the US, so only by testing can Scientists do contact tracing and mapping to stop it. It is a NEW world for DOCTORS after CV and MOST (?) will want to embrace all the knowledge and statistics that they can find and create. Why complain when Science moves on? Plus for the most cynical of reasons - hospitals do NOT want to be sued for misdiagnosing a patient that has CV symptoms. That would be bad for ALL Doctors' reputations. We would NOT want that? would we?