
Few hospitals complying with price transparency law
Just 14.3% of hospitals complying with rule meant to encourage consumer price shopping
A report from
According to the report, most of the hospitals’ pricing files are incomplete, with noncompliant hospitals failing to show the different prices for the same services by all insurers and plans as well as cash prices.
Only two of the 361
“Unfortunately, the vast majority of hospitals remain noncompliant after more than a year has passed since the Hospital Price Transparency rule took effect,” said Cynthia Fisher, founder and chairman of PatientsRightsAdvocate.org in a statement. “Hospitals’ omission of comparative price information in advance of care blocks consumers from benefiting from knowing the competition, seeking fair and equitable prices, and having the choice to lower their costs.”
The good news is the same report in July found that only 5.6% of hospitals were compliant, so 14.3% is an improvement.
In addition, the report found that only 37.9% of the hospitals posted a sufficient amount of negotiated rates, but over half were not compliant in other criteria of the rule, such as listing rates by each insurer and named plan. Also, only 0.5% of hospitals owned by the three largest hospital systems in the country – HCA Healthcare, Ascension, and CommonSpirit Health – are complying.
The
The full PatientRightsAdvocate.org transparency report can be viewed
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