A national healthcare watchdog says that two Central Illinois hospital systems remain non-compliant with a 2020 federal law on pricing transparency.
PatientRightsAdvocate.org released its 7th semi-annual Hospital Price Transparency report on Wednesday of last week, finding that 23% of Illinois’ hospitals are in compliance with the 2020 Hospital Price Transparency rule. The law took effect on January 1, 2021 requiring the nation’s hospitals to provide clear, accessible pricing information on their websites. The law allows the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to take action against hospitals that do not comply.
The new report also found that compliance in Illinois is down from 39% since the last report released in February. The Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services recently lowered transparency standards which allows the option to omit actual dollars-and-cents prices. According to PatientRightsAdvocate officials, the lowering of standards created an “illusion” in strides towards customer transparency. The new standards, they say, allow hospitals to omit actual dollars-and-cents prices from their websites.
Both the HSHS Hospital System and Memorial Health were listed as being non-compliant in the recent report.
PRA Founder and Chairman Cynthia Fisher said in a press release connected to the reports release last week that by keeping prices hidden from the public, it stagnated competition by stopping the public from comparing prices for standard procedures and it reduces the public’s protection to being overcharged. Fisher urged Congress to strengthen the current law to bring more hospitals into compliance.
Another PRA report, revealed wide price variations for the same care, even within the same hospitals (3x price variation on average) and across hospitals in the same state (10x price variation on average).