CMS is focusing new funding and efforts on hospital price transparency compliance enforcement. At the same time, state-level agencies (like HHSC in Texas) began issuing material violation notices and penalties for non-compliance.
In September 2022, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) added CMS Hospital Price Transparency oversight to their Work Plan. The Work Plan includes a review of the audit controls in place at CMS to ensure that mandated hospital price transparency information has been made publicly available as required by law.
"To evaluate CMS's monitoring and enforcement of the hospital price transparency rule, we will review the controls in place at CMS and statistically sample hospitals to determine whether CMS's controls are sufficient to ensure that hospital pricing information is readily available to patients as required by Federal law", said the OIG.
If the hospitals reviewed do not comply with CMS's rule for publicly posting their pricing and rate information, the Office of the Inspector General will contact the hospitals to assess the reason for noncompliance and determine any imposed consequences on the hospitals.
In addition to the OIG Work Plan, The Department of Health and Human Services (HHSC) awarded a contract to an outside consulting agency for an initiative titled “Hospital Price Transparency Enforcement and Compliance”. The start date of the award is July 7, 2022, with enforcement work continuing into 2027.
Compliance with the federal price transparency mandate has been at a crawl, as many hospitals claim the overwhelming administrative burden and lack of IT and revenue cycle staff make meeting the requirements difficult. There is also the difficulty and complexity associated with gathering the correct data sources, extracting the information, and building the technical resources required to meet the rule.
There are two core mandated formats that hospitals must produce to meet the price transparency mandate. First, and most importantly, there is the comprehensive machine-readable file of all items and services. This format must include pricing information for all the hospital’s items and services and all commercial payer-negotiated rates down to the plan level.
In addition to the machine-readable file, hospitals must also produce a consumer-friendly display of “shoppable” services, providing a user-friendly experience for patients to filter through pricing information. This format requires a total of 300 services, 70 of which have been pre-defined by CMS. The consumer-friendly experience must be free of barriers, such as requiring registration, login, or insurance information to gain access to hospital pricing.
Hospitals can benefit by creating the machine-readable file in a modern and API-ready data format (like JSON or XML) to prepare for the next phase of requirements and to utilize their own data points within other internal software programs. Unlike the hospital price transparency rule, CMS has invested in the development of a standardized schema for the Transparency in Coverage rule, which is a similar rule applicable to the insurance companies. An assumption can be made that a similar schema will soon apply to the hospital price transparency machine-readable files to address inconsistencies with the data formats due to a looser set of restrictions in the rule.
I would encourage you to contact ClaraPrice, Inc. for a complementary assessment if you need clarification on whether your hospital complies with state and federal price transparency requirements.