January 20, 2023 – Most hospitals are usually not fully complying with their obligation to publish 2021 prices, a latest evaluation shows.
The requirement should increase the transparency of health care costs and even make it possible to look for the perfect price for a mammogram, for instance. But just one in five hospitals provides this information.
“Our results are limited by the fact that we used a dedicated team to collect these data and the actual accessibility to patients and their caregivers may be even lower,” the authors write.
The study was published this week in Journal of General Internal Medicine.
The transparency requirement consists of two parts: comprehensive pricing information should be available online, and a listing of ordinary fees or an estimation tool for 300 common “purchasable” services should be published.
For the study, researchers examined the supply of cost information from 64 hospitals that were representative of the three,155 hospitals nationwide that must meet this requirement. Among the hospitals studied, they were more prone to meet the necessities in the event that they were positioned in areas with greater competition.
Previous studies had shown similarly poor compliance and the authors described the continuing deficiencies as “a cause for concern.”
Failure to comply may lead to fines. The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid imposed fines two hospitals last 12 months after previously being warned that they weren't in compliance. Northside Hospital Atlanta was fined $883,180 and Northside Hospital Cherokee was fined $214,320. Both hospitals are positioned in Georgia.