San Diego → Draining an abscess
Draining an abscess in San Diego
No hospital in San Diego publishes a self-pay price for this one. Where a hospital publishes a negotiated range instead, it is shown below.
For scale: Medicare pays hospitals about $205 for this as an outpatient service — the 2026 national rate, before local wage adjustment.
These prices are not directly comparable
Hospitals bill this one at different levels. One may publish a single operating-room line while another publishes the whole surgical episode — both honest, both under the same billing code. So the figures below are what each hospital publishes, not a like-for-like comparison, and we do not compute a "cheapest" from them. Why →
| Hospital | Self-pay price | List price | Insurers pay | Publishes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rady Children's Hospital - San Diego rchsd.org · San Diego | $57–$892 varies | $76 | $1,512–$9,420 | D |
| Paradise Valley Hospital paradisevalleyhospital.net · National City | $256 | $507 | $61–$514 | B |
| Uc San Diego Health Hillcrest - Hillcrest Med Ctr health.ucsd.edu · San Diego | $289–$1,416 varies | $2,575 | $15–$9,732 | C |
| Tri-city Medical Center tricitymed.org · Oceanside | $335–$497 varies | $559 | $167–$2,777 | C |
| Kaiser Foundation Hospital - San Marcos healthy.kaiserpermanente.org · San Marcos | $468 | $900 | $197–$586 | B |
| Scripps Green Hospital scripps.org · La Jolla | $714 | $2,856 | $111–$2,570 | B |
| Scripps Mercy Hospital scripps.org · San Diego | $714 | $2,856 | $111–$2,570 | B |
| Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla scripps.org · La Jolla | $714 | $2,856 | $111–$2,570 | B |
| Scripps Memorial Hospital - Encinitas scripps.org · Encinitas | $714 | $2,856 | $111–$2,570 | B |
| Sharp Memorial Hospital sharp.com · San Diego | $1,122 | $1,496 | $1–$1,227 | B |
| Sharp Coronado Hospital and Hlthcr Ctr sharp.com · Coronado | $1,122 | $1,496 | $1–$1,346 | B |
| Grossmont Hospital sharp.com · La Mesa | $1,122 | $1,496 | $1–$1,227 | B |
| Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center sharp.com · Chula Vista | $1,122 | $1,496 | $262–$23,240 | B |
What these three numbers mean
Self-pay price is what the hospital says it charges someone paying directly. It is the number to ask for by name. List price is the undiscounted charge almost nobody pays. Insurers pay is the range of procedure-specific negotiated rates in the file — useful mainly to see whether the self-pay price is above or below what insurers get.
Some hospitals attach one flat rate to nearly their whole price list. Those are excluded here, because a number identical for a colonoscopy and a blood test says nothing about either. More on that →
Billing code CPT 10060 —
Incision & drainage of abscess. Every price on this page is read from the hospital's
own published file; open a hospital to see which file and when it was read.