What It Costs to Give Birth at NYC Hospitals: Charges and Costs at 38 Hospitals

Every New York hospital reports each inpatient stay to SPARCS, the state’s all-payer database, along with what it charged and what the stay cost. The Department of Health publishes those figures by hospital and diagnosis group as its cost transparency dataset. We pulled the two diagnosis groups that cover most births, kept the hospitals in the five boroughs, and compared them side by side.

The comparison uses minor-severity stays, the uncomplicated births that make up 48% of vaginal deliveries and 45% of C-sections in the city’s hospitals. That keeps a hospital that handles many high-risk pregnancies from looking expensive only because its patients are sicker. Births with sterilization during the same stay fall in separate diagnosis groups and are not counted here.

The range: same delivery, very different bill

The top of the list is mostly academic medical centers: two Montefiore campuses in the Bronx and four NewYork-Presbyterian hospitals in Manhattan. The bottom is a mix of community and safety-net hospitals in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. By borough, the typical hospital median ran from $15,055 on Staten Island to $30,146 in Manhattan.

Cesareans follow the same pattern at a higher level. The typical C-section median was $11,623 above the same hospital’s vaginal birth median. Montefiore’s Wakefield and Weiler campuses again sit at the top, at $63,837 and $62,600, while BronxCare’s Concourse campus charged $6,990.

Charges versus what a birth actually costs

A charge comes from the hospital’s own price list, the chargemaster. Cost is what the hospital reports spending on the stay, estimated from its annual cost report. The two can move separately, and in New York City they do.

Lenox Hill Hospital reported a mean cost of $4,387 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth and a median charge of $28,251. Kings County Hospital Center, a public hospital in East Flatbush, reported the highest cost of any hospital, $20,754, and a median charge of $26,882. The charges were almost the same; the gap between charge and cost was not.

That is the pattern across the public system. The 11 NYC Health + Hospitals facilities report a typical cost of $15,431 per uncomplicated vaginal birth, against $8,616 at the other hospitals, yet their typical charge, $24,093, is lower than the others’ $26,872. Their markups run from 1.1 to 2.2 times. At the other hospitals the typical markup is 3.2 times, and 17 of the 38 hospitals charge at least three times their cost.

One hospital charges less than its cost. BronxCare’s Concourse campus reported a mean cost of $9,915 for a vaginal birth and a mean charge below that, a ratio of 0.8 times. At the other end of the cost scale, Wyckoff Heights reported a mean cost of $2,344, the lowest in the city. Reported costs depend on how each hospital allocates expenses in its cost report, so a single unusually low or high figure is a reason for caution, not a finding on its own.

All 38 hospitals

Minor-severity stays in 2021, sorted by the median charge for a vaginal birth. Charges and costs in dollars; the ratio is mean charge divided by mean cost.

Three more hospitals reported births in 2021 but fewer than 30 minor-severity deliveries of one type; they are in the CSV, flagged as not ranked. Coney Island Hospital now operates as South Brooklyn Health.

What this means for you

If you have insurance, the charge is not your bill. Your plan pays a negotiated rate, and you owe the deductible, copays and coinsurance your plan sets. The ranking still matters: a hospital that charges more often negotiates higher rates, and for a patient in a high-deductible plan or out of network, the charge is where the conversation starts.

If you are uninsured, the charge is the opening number, not the final one. New York’s financial assistance law caps what an uninsured patient pays: nothing out of pocket at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, no more than 10% of the Medicaid rate up to 300%, and 20% up to 400%. That is a fraction of a $25,496 list price. For the household size, count the baby. Pregnancy also opens Medicaid at higher incomes than for other adults, and Emergency Medicaid can cover labor and delivery for people who meet income rules but not immigration rules. How the childbirth bill is built.

Ask before the due date. Call the hospital’s financial counselor while you are still pregnant, and after the birth say this to the billing office:

“I’d like an itemized bill for my delivery and a separate one for my baby’s account, and the financial assistance application. Please hold both accounts while my application is decided. State law lets me apply at any stage.”

If a hospital refuses to accept an application or ignores its own policy, complain to the Attorney General’s Health Care Bureau at 1-800-428-9071. Our comparison of 14 hospitals’ financial assistance policies shows how each one takes applications.

Methodology

Data. New York State Department of Health, Hospital Inpatient Discharges (SPARCS De-Identified): Cost Transparency: Beginning 2009, downloaded through the state’s open data API on October 16, 2026. The dataset’s most recent year is 2021; the state has not published 2022 or later in this series, so these figures are five years old and charges have likely risen since.

Selection. APR-DRG 560 (vaginal delivery) and APR-DRG 540 (cesarean section without sterilization), severity of illness 1 (minor). Hospitals were placed in a borough by their facility identifier, matched to the county in the state’s emergency department dataset. A hospital is ranked for a delivery type only if it reported at least 30 minor-severity discharges of that type; 38 hospitals met the bar for both.

Measures. Median and mean charge and median and mean cost are as published by the state for each hospital. The charge-to-cost ratio is the mean charge divided by the mean cost. Citywide “typical” figures are the median across the 38 hospitals, not a patient-weighted average. Costs are estimates the state derives from each hospital’s cost report. Charges cover the hospital stay only: the newborn’s own account, anesthesia and the physician bill are separate.

Download: nyc-childbirth-costs-sparcs.csv, one row per hospital, with all-severity averages as well, plus the headline figures. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. Credit: NYC Med News, “What It Costs to Give Birth at NYC Hospitals,” October 16, 2026, from NYS DOH SPARCS data.