Discover at a glance whether your hospital might be subject to price transparency penalties with HDA’s Price Transparency Compliance Dashboard.
Even though hospitals have been required to comply with the CMS’s Hospital Price Transparency Rule since January 1 of this year, as many as 94 percent are not yet in compliance.
In many cases, as we’ve noted in the past, these non-compliant hospitals are partially compliant, which often means they’ve published a price transparency file that meets some (but not all) of the rule’s requirements. The problem for hospitals is that, from an enforcement perspective, partial compliance equals non-compliance, meaning they could be subject to penalties.
That doesn’t help anybody.
To help clear up confusion around whether a data file meets all of the CMS rule’s requirements – and to further our mission of improving price transparency in US healthcare more broadly – we’ve created a Price Transparency Dashboard, which assesses compliance based on those requirements. Here’s what you need to know to access and interpret your organization’s dashboard and score.
What Is the Price Transparency Compliance Dashboard?
The Price Transparency Compliance Dashboard is a tool we put together to show hospitals at a glance how well their price transparency files comply with CMS’s Hospital Price Transparency Rule.
The dashboard consists of three elements (see Figure 1):
- Overall score: This score is the snapshot view of a hospital’s compliance. A score of 10 means that a hospital is fully compliant. Anything less signals that a hospital needs to make changes to its machine-readable price transparency file to come into compliance and avoid potential penalties.
- Questions and answers: The overall score is based on the answers to 10 questions, each of which is worth one point. Your dashboard will show each of those questions and your answer (yes = compliant; no = non-compliant) so you can see at a glance where your hospital is and isn’t in compliance with CMS’s rule.
- Color coding: To make the dashboard even easier to use, we’ve implemented green / red color coding. Green dots mean compliance; red dots mean non-compliance. This will help you understand quickly where to focus your work to get your file into compliance.
Figure 1: Sample Price Transparency Dashboard
We’ve designed the dashboard to be a high-level indicator. Hospitals can drill down into the answers for each component question to understand exactly where they do and do not meet the requirements laid out by CMS.
How Do We Calculate Your Price Transparency Compliance Score?
We calculate price transparency scores based on the answers to the 10 questions, all of which are pulled directly from CMS requirements for machine-readable price transparency files. As mentioned above, each question is worth one point.
Here’s what the questions in each category assess, broadly:
- Accessibility / Format: Is the file posted on a publicly available website in a prominent manner? Is the file a single digital file? Is it machine readable?
- Data Elements: Does the file include all individual items and services (including service packages) provided by the hospital?
The number of questions varies by section, but, again, the questions themselves are pulled directly from CMS documentation about what hospitals’ pricing files must include.
How to Access Your Price Transparency Compliance Dashboard and Score
If you’d like to see your hospital’s Price Transparency Dashboard and score, let us know. We’ll give you access free of charge.
If your hospital has not yet published a machine-readable price transparency file, you can expect a score of zero. But we may also be able to help you in that situation. For example, if you’re not sure how to approach the work of creating and publishing your machine-readable price transparency file, our team may be able to help. Reach out to start the conversation.
No Matter Your Compliance Score, We Can Help
Once you’ve had a chance to view your price transparency compliance score, you’ll either breathe a sigh of relief that you’re fully compliant or have to decide what steps to take to get into compliance. In either situation, we may be able to help.
First, if you’re compliant today, well done. Bringing price transparency to US healthcare will positively impact everyone in the system. If you’re interested in discovering what your competitors are charging for their services, please get in touch. We can connect you with data from hospitals in your region or with your specialty so you can confidently enter negotiations with payers or shape communications with patients to highlight key pricing messaging.
If your compliance score is less than 10 / 10, we can help you update your file so that it becomes fully compliant.
To view your compliance score or learn more about how to view your competitors’ data or how to bring your hospital into compliance, get in touch.