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IPFS News Link • Healthcare Industry

Money grabbers: US hospitals are not complying with cost transparency rules;

• https://www.naturalnews.com by Mary Villareal

A Cleveland Clinic Foundation study found that only about a third or 32 percent of hospitals are completely transparent about their joint replacement costs, while a recent Rice University study also found that only 35 percent of America's top hospitals disclosed their maximum, minimum and cash service prices.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) hospital price transparency rule said all hospitals must provide a list of standard charges for all services and items online in a downloadable format. Each item or price must be identified by the code used by the hospital for billing, and the information must be freely provided without requiring access to personal information.

Each transaction, operation, pricing, total fees, payer-specific fees, minimum and maximum spot price and discounts must be made public and accessible to patients. It must also include a cost estimate for the 300 most common services. They also require that the information is machine-readable. This will allow patients to know what they should expect to pay and let them compare the prices with what they would pay if they go through insurance.