JAMA Study of Price Transparency Compliance

In the June 7, 2022 JAMA publication, a study found that compliance with the Federal Price Transparency rule was extremely low across all US hospitals. The study looked at available data between July 1 to September 30, 2021 for 5,239 hospitals and found only 5.7% of hospitals had both machine-readable files and shoppable services posted. The percentage of hospitals that had a machine-readable file but no shoppable services was 13.9% and the percentage with shoppable services but no machine-readable file was 29.4%. About half, 50.9%, of hospitals had neither a machine-readable file nor shoppable services.  

This study was completed with 2021 data so the numbers may be different in 2022, especially in light of the CMS changes in fines for non-compliant hospitals post 1/2/2022 and fines that were just given to two Georgia hospitals. We look forward to seeing future studies like this as they will gauge whether the CMS penalties are increasing the compliance rate among hospitals.