Pulling back the curtain: how many California hospitals are complying with federal price transparency rules
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Issue brief (California HealthCare Foundation)
- Author(s):
- Baker, Laurence, author Mulaney, Bianca, author Shah, Shreya A., author Kim, Christine, author
- Contributor(s):
- California HealthCare Foundation, issuing body.
- Publication:
- [Oakland, CA] : California Health Care Foundation, July 2021
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Health Care Costs -- legislation & jurisprudence Health Care Costs -- statistics & numerical data Health Expenditures -- legislation & jurisprudence Hospitals California United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- As of January 1, 2021, a new federal government policy required hospitals to release “clear, accessible pricing information about the items and services they provide” in two ways. First, they must post publicly on the internet a machine-readable file that includes information including both the amount they charge per service and the negotiated amounts they actually receive from payers. Second, they must provide information about prices for at least 300 services consumers might comparison shop for, in a consumer-friendly format. Hospitals can meet this second requirement by posting a machine-readable file of prices, or by providing a price estimator tool that would allow consumers to enter information and obtain individualized estimates of their out-of-pocket costs. Hospitals not meeting the requirement may be penalized by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). A goal of the regulation is to improve price transparency, in the hopes that it will help efforts to manage health care costs, although debate continues about how big an impact the regulation could have, and early reports have shown that compliance with the new regulation is far from complete. This study was undertaken to see whether California hospitals were complying with the new regulations, as of April 2021. This brief summarizes results from the authors’ analysis, which may be found in more detail in the full report, Compliance with Price Transparency by California Hospitals. 1 Since the regulation applies to facilities with state hospital licenses, data from the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development were used to identify 522 facilities with California hospital licenses. The website of each hospital was searched between April 1, 2021, and April 30, 2021, seeking to identify information compliant with the price transparency regulations. The results were cross-checked with data from Turquoise Health, which has used automated methods to compile information reported by hospitals in response to the regulations. Results are presented here for 391 general acute care, children’s, and specialty hospitals covered by the regulation, excluding Kaiser hospitals. Limited results are presented for many other facilities with hospital licenses, behavioral health, and skilled nursing facilities, which often appear to have different pricing structures than the main group of facilities.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (5 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918366982306676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918366982306676