Renal Failure with CC in Alaska

Kidney and urinary DRGs include renal failure, dialysis access, kidney stone management, and urinary tract surgery. Many of these admissions are short-stay but high-volume, so small per-case price differences add up across a hospital population.

Renal Failure with CC is Medicare DRG 683 in the Renal category. National Medicare average for this DRG is $10,815 across 2,677 reporting hospitals. The state-level view here filters that universe down to Alaska only.

Alaska's average for this DRG sits well above 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 2× 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.