# Group therapy in GA

Billing code `90853`. Prices for this code at 40 hospitals in GA, taken from the machine-readable standard charge files each hospital is required to publish under the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule (45 CFR 180.50).

Source page: https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/group-therapy

HC GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY INTENSIVE OUTPATIENT PSYCHIATRIC

**Where this is done matters more than which hospital:** Group therapy is a procedure a doctor's office can perform, and Medicare pays about 4.2x more for it at a hospital outpatient department than in an office. Every price below is a hospital's, and excludes the doctor's separate bill. Do not quote these as the cost of the procedure without saying which setting they describe.

## Before quoting any figure below

- **Hospital charges only.** The surgeon, anaesthetist, radiologist and pathologist bill separately and appear in no hospital price file, by construction. Every figure below is part of a total, never the total.
- **A negotiated rate is not a bill.** It is what a hospital and an insurer agreed. What a patient owes depends on their deductible, coinsurance and out-of-pocket maximum.
- **Each hospital's figure is a median across its own plans.** The spread inside one hospital is often wider than the gap between two of them.
- **"not mentioned" is not $0.** It means this hospital's file does not label a row that way. Silence is not a statement that the charge does not exist.
- **A hospital absent from the table says nothing about its prices.** It may publish this code under a revenue or drug code this site cannot map to a procedure.

A procedure code is billed twice -- once by the hospital for its own costs, once by the doctor for their work -- and hospitals publish different sides of that split under the same code. Of the hospitals here, 3 publish a physician fee; 14 publish a facility charge; 3 publish both, mixed together; 20 do not label which half the figure is.

## Typical price

|  | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cheapest tenth | $55 |
| Typical | $124 |
| Dearest tenth | $238 |

The cheapest and dearest tenth are the hospitals a tenth of the way in from each end, not the single cheapest and dearest. Every hospital, including both extremes, is in the table below.

That is a 4-fold difference for the same billing code -- a gap between hospitals, not between treatments.

## Every hospital publishing this code

| Hospital | Where | CMS rating | Typical | Facility charge | Physician fee | Self-pay | Lowest | Highest | Plans on file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grady Memorial Hospital | ATLANTA | 2/5 | see split | $92 | $28 | not published | $24 | $170 | 53 |
| Chatuge Regional Hospital | HIAWASSEE | not rated | $33 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $31 | $14 | $53 | 18 |
| Atrium Health Navicent Peach | BYRON | 1/5 | $38 | not mentioned | $38 | not published | $28 | $61 | 22 |
| Navicent Health Baldwin | MILLEDGEVILLE | 2/5 | see split | $90 | $38 | not published | $24 | $92 | 31 |
| Mountain Lakes Medical Center | CLAYTON | not rated | $56 | $56 | not mentioned | $28 | $49 | $1,100 | 3 |
| Emanuel Medical Center | SWAINSBORO | 4/5 | $70 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $432 | $36 | $576 | 460 |
| Dodge County Hospital | EASTMAN | not rated | $89 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $27 | $169 | 11 |
| Atrium Health Navicent the Medical Center | MACON | 2/5 | see split | $135 | $45 | $104 | $24 | $489 | 59 |
| Northeast Georgia Medical Center Habersham | DEMOREST | 3/5 | $91 | $91 | not mentioned | $198 | $34 | $93 | 5 |
| St Francis Hospital- Emory Healthcare | COLUMBUS | 3/5 | $92 | $92 | not mentioned | not published | $31 | $223 | 8 |
| Phoebe Sumter Medical Center | AMERICUS | 3/5 | $93 | $93 | not mentioned | not published | $89 | $156 | 7 |
| Northeast Georgia Medical Center | GAINESVILLE | 3/5 | $102 | $102 | not mentioned | $198 | $34 | $105 | 5 |
| Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital | ALBANY | 2/5 | $103 | $103 | not mentioned | not published | $98 | $171 | 7 |
| NGMC Barrow | WINDER | 4/5 | $104 | $104 | not mentioned | $198 | $34 | $107 | 5 |
| Emory University Hospital | ATLANTA | 4/5 | $105 | $105 | not mentioned | $351 | $102 | $216 | 7 |
| Emory Decatur Hospital | DECATUR | 2/5 | $105 | $105 | not mentioned | $351 | $102 | $216 | 7 |
| Emory University Hospital Midtown | ATLANTA | 2/5 | $106 | $106 | not mentioned | $351 | $103 | $219 | 7 |
| Northeast Georgia Medical Center Lumpkin | DAHLONEGA | 5/5 | $108 | $108 | not mentioned | $198 | $34 | $111 | 5 |
| Candler Hospital | SAVANNAH | 2/5 | $109 | $109 | not mentioned | not published | $89 | $242 | 8 |
| Jeff Davis Hospital | HAZLEHURST | not rated | $112 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $114 | $55 | $251 | 19 |
| Northside Hospital | ATLANTA | 3/5 | $124 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $308 | $18 | $411 | 381 |
| WellStar MCG Health, Affiliated with Med Col | AUGUSTA | 1/5 | $125 | $125 | not mentioned | $367 | $89 | $324 | 14 |
| Northside Hospital Forsyth | CUMMING | 4/5 | $126 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $308 | $17 | $411 | 378 |
| Northside Hospital Cherokee | CANTON | 4/5 | $126 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $308 | $15 | $411 | 384 |
| Candler County Hospital | METTER | not rated | $134 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $54 | $199 | 15 |
| Northside Hospital Gwinnett | LAWRENCEVILLE | 3/5 | $137 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $308 | $18 | $411 | 399 |
| Northside Hospital Duluth | DULUTH | 4/5 | $137 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $308 | $17 | $411 | 399 |
| Memorial Health University Medical Center | SAVANNAH | 1/5 | $137 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $496 | $72 | $446 | 25 |
| Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center | ROME | 2/5 | $166 | $166 | not mentioned | $478 | $54 | $812 | 152 |
| Memorial Satilla Health | WAYCROSS | 3/5 | $184 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $813 | $55 | $731 | 46 |
| Evans Memorial Hospital | CLAXTON | not rated | $198 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $54 | $298 | 13 |
| Colquitt Regional Medical Center | MOULTRIE | 4/5 | $206 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $219 | $32 | $219 | 44 |
| Piedmont Macon North Hospital | MACON | 4/5 | $230 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $106 | $31 | $340 | 56 |
| Memorial Health Meadows Hospital | VIDALIA | 5/5 | $235 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $233 | $237 | 2 |
| Fairview Park Hospital | DUBLIN | 4/5 | $237 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $233 | $242 | 5 |
| Doctors Hospital | AUGUSTA | 3/5 | $237 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $233 | $242 | 3 |
| Coliseum Medical Centers | MACON | 3/5 | $246 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $106 | $23 | $354 | 56 |
| Piedmont Eastside Medical Center | SNELLVILLE | 2/5 | $364 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $382 | $45 | $1,147 | 60 |
| Tanner Medical Center - Carrollton | CARROLLTON | 2/5 | $365 | not mentioned | $365 | $567 | $103 | $682 | 217 |
| Higgins General Hospital | BREMEN | not rated | $380 | not mentioned | $380 | $567 | $380 | $450 | 14 |

## Self-pay

Self-pay is what the hospital charges someone paying themselves rather than through insurance. Paying self-pay usually does not count toward a deductible, so it can cost less for one service and more across a year. Every other figure here is what an insurer pays, not what a patient would.

At 4 of the 27 hospitals here that publish a self-pay price it is LOWER than what that same hospital typically accepts from an insurer; at the other 23 it is higher.

## The doctor's side, roughly

Nationally, Medicare allows about $22 for the clinician who performs or reads this service, across 244 billing providers in 2024. That is a separate bill from everything above and is NOT added to any figure on this page -- it is here to show the rough size of what a hospital price leaves out.

1 of these 40 hospitals have not published an updated price file in over a year, or do not say when they last did. Hospitals are required to update at least annually, so those figures may not reflect what they charge now: Jeff Davis Hospital.

## Others in behavioral & mental health

- [Individual therapy session, 60 minutes](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/individual-therapy-session-60-minutes) -- 48 hospitals, typically $302
- [Psychotherapy, 30 minutes](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/psychotherapy-30-minutes) -- 48 hospitals, typically $184
- [Individual therapy session, 45 minutes](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/individual-therapy-session-45-minutes) -- 46 hospitals, typically $230
- [Family therapy with the patient, 50 minutes](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/family-therapy-with-the-patient-50-minutes) -- 46 hospitals, typically $235
- [Family therapy without the patient, 50 minutes](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/family-therapy-without-the-patient-50-minutes) -- 44 hospitals, typically $302
- [Psychiatric diagnostic evaluation](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/psychiatric-diagnostic-evaluation) -- 43 hospitals, typically $193

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Every procedure with a published price in GA: https://clearcharge.org/price/ga
Prices that look wrong: info@clearcharge.org

Compiled by Clearcharge (clearcharge.org) from each hospital's machine-readable standard-charge file. When quoting a figure, cite the source page above. The hospital files behind these figures state data through dates from 2024-07-01 to 2026-07-01; per-hospital staleness is flagged above.