If a supermarket functioned like a hospital, when you entered you would be told to have a seat while someone decided what you needed and did your shopping for you. Later someone would appear with a cart filled with grocery bags and would hand you a summary bill.

The summary bill would list only six charges -- one each for Meat, Dairy, Produce, Canned Goods, Dry Goods and Non-food Items. You would be expected to pay the summary bill without knowing what was in the grocery bags. You wouldn't be allowed to take the grocery bags home with you, so you would never know precisely what you had purchased.

When you go to an actual supermarket, of course, you decide which items you're going to buy, and the price for each item is clearly displayed. When you check out, you leave the supermarket with your purchases and with an itemized bill that lists each item that you purchased and the price that you paid for it.

A summary hospital bill summarizes charges by revenue code or department, the hospital's version of Meat, Dairy, Produce, Canned Goods, Dry Goods and Non-food Items. The descriptions of the charges look like those in the first column of the table below. Nearly all summary hospital bills are only one page long. Most of the charges in a summary hospital bill are likely to be over $100.00.

An itemized hospital bill lists the charges for individual items. The descriptions of the charges look like those in the second column of the table below. An itemized hospital bill may be anywhere from one page long to over one hundred pages long, depending mainly on the length of the patient's hospital stay. Many of the charges in an itemized hospital bill are likely to be under $100.00.