Patient Rights Advocate released the Fourth Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Report. The report found only a quarter of the hospitals studied were fully compliant with a federal price transparency rule.
The federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule was implemented on January 1, 2021, requiring hospitals to post all prices online, easily accessible and searchable, in the form of (1) a single machine-readable standard charges file for all items and services for all payers and all plans as well as all discounted cash prices, and (2) a standard charges display with actual prices or a price estimator tool for the 300 most common shoppable services.
Their latest review of hospital compliance, completed just over two years after the Hospital Price Transparency Rule’s implementation, analyzed the websites of 2,000 U.S. hospitals focusing on the nations’ largest health systems, and found only 24.5% of them (489) to be compliant with all the
requirements of the rule. Though the majority of hospitals have posted files, the widescale noncompliance of 75.5% of hospitals is due to most hospitals’ files being incomplete, illegible, or not having prices clearly associated with both payer and plan. This noncompliance obstructs the
ability of patients, employer and union purchasers, and technology developers to comparatively analyze prices, make informed decisions, and have evidence to remedy errors, overcharges, and fraud.
Read more:
- Fourth Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Report. Patient Rights Advocate. February 2023.
- Hospital Price Transparency Rule