Pulmonary Edema and Respiratory Failure in Texas

Respiratory DRGs include pneumonia, COPD, ventilator-supported respiratory failure, and chronic lung disease. Length of stay drives most of the cost spread, especially for ventilator cases that cross the 96-hour threshold.

Pulmonary Edema and Respiratory Failure is Medicare DRG 189 in the Respiratory category. National Medicare average for this DRG is $13,813 across 2,752 reporting hospitals. The state-level view here filters that universe down to Texas only.

Texas's average for this DRG sits close to the national Medicare mean. State-level differences are explained primarily by the regional Medicare wage index — the multiplier CMS applies to standardize DRG payments to local labor costs — alongside hospital case mix and the concentration of academic referral centers in the state's larger metros.

Within the state, the 3× spread between the lowest- and highest-reporting facility usually reflects length-of-stay differences, complication adjustments for sicker patients, teaching-status add-ons, and outlier payments for unusually long stays. Two hospitals reporting the same DRG can post meaningfully different totals without anything “wrong” happening at either site. For non-Medicare patients, the more relevant figure is the negotiated commercial rate published in each hospital's machine-readable file under the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule.

For a planned admission, the most useful complement to the cost view is the hospital-specific quality data on CMS Care Compare. The site publishes risk-adjusted measures of mortality, readmission, complication, infection, and patient experience for every Medicare-participating hospital. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators feed many of these CMS measures.

For complex procedures, hospital-level case volume correlates with outcomes in published research, even after risk adjustment. CMS publishes case counts on Care Compare alongside outcome measures.