Hospitals keep ER fees secret. We’re uncovering them.

Reporter Sarah Kliff is collecting emergency room bills as part of a year-long project focused on American health care prices.

Each year, Americans make 141 million trips to the emergency room. In nearly all those visits, hospitals charge patients something called a facility fee: the price for walking in the door and seeking medical service.

Facility fees can be big: Reporter Sarah Kliff has seen charges that range from $533 to more than $3,000. But because these fees are kept secret until you receive your bill, we can’t know how high they get — or how much they vary.

We want to bring transparency to these extremely common but little-understood fees. So we have been collecting facility fee bills from our readers as part of a year-long project focused on American health care prices.

To submit your own emergency room bill, go to our secure bill submission site.

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