Surprise bills can also hit non-emergency and non-walk-in in-hospital patients from out-of-network specialists, new research has shown.

This is especially true for some specialities, including anesthesiologists, interventional radiologists, emergency medicine doctors, pathologists, neurosurgeons, and diagnostic radiologists — who tend to have the high markups above Medicare rates, researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School reported in the January 17 issue of JAMA.

"The doctors with the highest markups are often the ones that patients don't actually choose," study senior author Gerard F. Anderson, a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School, stated in a release about the findings, warning that, “many people are shocked two weeks or two months later when they get a bill from a doctor they didn't really meet and no one told them what the exam would cost and later they discover the price is outrageous. But this is happening all the time."

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