by
John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | December 16, 2021
Those with more up-to-date health IT systems were more likely to abide by the rule, which may be due to having more financial resources and personnel to mitigate the cost of implementing the rule, according to Bai. She adds that some hospitals might strategically avoid disclosing price to protect revenue, and that the compliance cost might be the reason why small and less IT-prepared hospitals are hesitant to comply. Also, whether a hospital was for-profit, system-affiliated and urban or non-urban also makes a difference.
"Besides imposing penalties, raising public awareness of the compliance status of hospitals, especially at the local level, would help. However, as we found in the study, compliance cost might be the reason for small, independent, and less IT-prepared hospitals' low compliance rate. Allowing hospitals some time to adapt and comply might be a sensible approach," said Bai.
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Another study conducted by nonprofit PatientRightsAdvocate.org back in August found that even less were complying, with
just over 5% of U.S. hospitals posting their prices online. Another poll conducted by the same organization found that 82% of Americans support requiring hospitals to make prices readily available, and 77% support increasing the penalty for noncompliance from $300 per hospital per day to $300 per hospital bed per day. Another 56% felt they or a close family friend had been overcharged when seeking medical care.
Earlier this year, President Biden passed an executive order to crack down on unfair anti-competitive practices in healthcare and other industries, including noncompliance with price transparency, particularly by large hospitals that have created monopolization of practices through large-scale consolidation.
“Every single day, hospitals and insurance companies can choose to overcharge patients because we have had no ability to see, before we get care, the prices we will be charged. Consumers in healthcare are not just the patients. They are employer- and union-sponsored plans that come out of the employee’s wages. It’s our money to save," Cynthia Fisher, founder and chairman of PatientsRightsAdvocate.org, told HCB News at the time.
The findings were published in the
Journal of General Internal Medicine.
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