Three visits to Florida freestanding emergency departments produced reported facility charges of $8,000 to $35,000, according to Tampa Bay 28. The cases raise a practical distinction: these off-campus sites are hospital emergency departments, not urgent-care clinics, even when a patient seeks help for an injury or possible exposure.
The reported charges included $17,437 for Linene Kates’s visit after she fell at a Tampa boat show and had an MRI; the treating physician billed separately. Mark Currier’s dislocated finger was straightened and splinted, after which the facility billed his insurer more than $8,000. Abram Jacobson was billed $35,000 after seeking care following contact with a bat. Tampa Bay 28 reported that Jacobson later went to the health department because he said the emergency department had not given him all the booster shots he needed. These are reported facility or bill amounts, not a statement of what each patient ultimately owed after insurance or other payments.
A facility-count snapshot, not a visit trend
Florida’s inventories show the scale of the off-campus emergency-department system, but their figures are snapshots from different dates. The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration listed 76 hospitals and 141 hospital-based off-campus emergency departments on April 24, 2025. A separate AHCA inventory cited by Tampa Bay 28 lists 81 hospitals and 166 departments. Those counts alone do not establish how the number of visits changed between the inventory dates.
A 2021 Florida Senate bill analysis provides a separate historical measure: it reported that the number of freestanding emergency departments had risen 45% since 2016 and visits had increased 83%, counting 87 facilities operating under 59 hospital licenses at the time. That earlier trend does not show how visits changed after 2021 or explain the bills in the three reported cases.
Hospital emergency departments away from hospital campuses
AHCA says a hospital-based off-campus emergency department must operate under the same direction, offer the same services and comply with the same regulatory requirements as the hospital’s main-campus emergency department. That designation helps explain why a visit at a freestanding site may be billed as emergency care rather than urgent care; it does not, by itself, establish what a particular patient’s insurance will cover or what the patient will owe.
The price comparison is substantial in the figures cited in the report. A 2021 Florida House analysis put average urgent-care treatment at about $193, compared with more than $2,000 at a freestanding emergency department. Those averages provide context, not a price estimate for any of the three patients’ specific visits.
Federal billing protections do not erase every cost
The No Surprises Act protects people with group and individual health plans from surprise bills in many emergency-care situations, among other circumstances. But the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says patients may still owe applicable health-plan cost-sharing when the law applies. The protection therefore does not mean that every emergency-department charge disappears or that a visit has no out-of-pocket cost.
