How much do IV Bags cost?

Question

Out of curiosity.

Answer 1

About $10 a bag.

Answer 2

It depends on the bag.

Manufacturing costs are far less than "retail" cost.  I've heard that it costs less than 25 cents to manufacture a bag of normal saline, but it costs a patient usually well over a hundred dollars.

So you have the most common bags of drugs, saline, that are cheap, all the way up to specialtybags, like Viaspan, which can cost up to 1,000 dollars per bag.

Banana bags, which have all kinds of electrolytes and other additives, can also be very expensive, over a thousand dollars.  

My last trip to the ER, during which a doctor saw me and I was given 1 liter of normal saline, cost $800 after a discount was given to my insurance company.

JennRN

surgery.about.com