How Do I Know if I’ve Been Assigned Observation Status or Inpatient Status?

Hospital observation services are short-term outpatient services received when you are in the hospital for monitoring purposes and/or to determine whether you should be admitted as an inpatient. It is important to know that if you are receiving observation services (sometimes referred to as under observation status), you have not been formally admitted to the hospital as an inpatient, even if you are given a room or stay overnight.

This makes it difficult for you to tell if you’re an inpatient or an observation patient. You can’t assume that, just because you’re in a regular hospital room or in a hospital bed rather than on a gurney, you’re an inpatient. Your doctor or attending medical staff would be able to inform you.

Nor can you assume since you’ve been in the hospital for a few days you’re an inpatient. Although observation is intended for short periods of time, it doesn’t always work that way. For example, you go to the emergency room for stomach pain, after a diagnostic blood tests and or imaging/x-rays, there is no conclusive diagnosis and the doctor places you into observation for an overnight stay.

Most private insurance plans do not cover observation. That is why it is important for you to ask the doctor or medical staff if you are being placed in observation or admitted as an inpatient.

However, there is a supplemental plan that can help pay for hospital observation. Contact me for more information.