PatientRightsAdvocate.org (PRA), a 501(c)(3) “nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on ushering in systemwide healthcare price transparency,” has released its latest Hospital Price Transparency Report, which finds 51% of the 2,000 hospitals it reviewed “are still failing to comply with the federal rule that went into effect more than five years ago requiring all hospitals to publicly post all prices online.”
The 49% of hospitals that it found compliant, however, are a vast improvement over the 21% of hospitals that were complaint in its previous report. The organization largely attributes that improvement to CMS’ “extensive updates to its GitHub specifications, FAQs, and other communications via webinars, email and GitHub. This work has allowed hospitals to improve their compliance with price transparency file format standardization and file access requirements.”
The group found, however, that only 18% of the hospitals it surveyed “publish dollar-and-cents prices for at least half of the items and services in their price data file.”
“CMS has made progress enforcing its hospital transparency rules, but this report shows that most hospitals still owe patients clear, usable dollars-and-cents prices they can look up before receiving care,” said PRA Founder and Chair Cynthia Fisher. “Too many patients are still being denied the real, upfront prices they need to shop for affordable care and protect themselves from overcharges.”
PRA states that the bipartisan Patients Deserve Price Tags Act that was nearly unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in July “would require hospitals as well as clinical laboratories, imaging providers, and ambulatory surgical centers to post dollar-and-cents prices for both cash and health plan negotiated rates and disclose any formulas, algorithms, schedules, contractual methodologies, or other information necessary to calculate such prices.”
