A woman who chose to use nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, to dull her discomfort during labor as an alternative to an epidural was hit with a nearly $5K bill.
Nurse-midwife Karli-Rae Kerrschneider wanted the same supportive birth experience she promises her own patients — and that included the use of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, to dull her discomfort.
Medical Service: Kerrschneider had an uncomplicated vaginal delivery attended by a nurse-midwife and a doula. Her water delivery was followed by a two-day hospital stay for herself and her newborn. Her only pain relief during her labor was the analgesic gas, which is a mixture of 50% nitrous oxide and 50% oxygen.
Kerrschneider even joked with her husband that for that amount of money she could have had the baby at home, bought her own nitrous oxide machine and rented it out to other people afterward. Well, she was close. A new nitrous oxide delivery machine retails for around $6,500 and tank refills cost less than $50, according to CareStream America, a company that sells the equipment.
The use of nitrous oxide has long been common during childbirth in the United Kingdom and Canada, in part because of its low cost. Many people in the U.S. have learned about the practice while watching the popular British period drama “Call the Midwife,” set in the 1950s. Epidural anesthesia largely displaced nitrous oxide in the U.S. in the ’70s.
Hudson Hospital told Kaiser Health News in a statement that the anesthesia category is the one it uses to bill for that service, noting that “the billing category is broad and does not necessarily indicate that an anesthesiologist or a certified registered nurse anesthetist performed a service.” For comparison, though, Hudson Hospital charges, on average, only $1,495 for an epidural, according to its communications office. That’s less than a third the cost of the nitrous.
The hospital knocked the nitrous oxide charge down to the one-hour rate of $496 — still almost five times what her own hospital would charge.
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