Augusta University Health was one of only eight Georgia hospitals found to be compliant with a national price transparency law in a survey reported by PatientRightsAdvocate.org.
A national law enacted on Jan. 1, 2021, requires hospitals to list prices as a single machine-readable standard charges file and to include a standard charges display with actual prices or a price estimator tool for the 300 most common shoppable services. The rule is intended to provide consumers and employers broad access to pricing information, empowering them to benefit from competition and drive down the costs of care and coverage.
In a nationwide survey of 2,000 hospitals, Patient Rights Advocate found only 16 percent complied. In Georgia, eight of 36 hospitals surveyed (22 percent) are in compliance. AU Health was the only local hospital on the list.
The majority of the hospitals ranked non-compliant were so rated because of incomplete price listings. However, 5.1 percent didn’t list any standard charges. Two of the three largest hospital systems, HCA Healthcare and Ascension, had none of their hospitals in full compliance.
This is the third such survey conducted by Patient Rights Advocate. In February, a survey of 1,000 hospitals found only 14.3 percent in compliance. Since then, 11.3 percent of those who had been non-compliant have been rated as now being compliant.
Although the law went into effect 20 months ago, the Department of Health and Human Services has issued only two fines for non-compliance. One of those fined was Northside Hospital in Atlanta.
The report stated, “We commend the 319 hospitals that we estimated to comply with the rule.
Unfortunately, our review found that most hospitals are withholding crucial information from consumers by not releasing their hospital’s actual, complete pricing data or by making the data difficult to access.”
The report said the two hospitals that had been fined became compliant soon afterward, showing that penalties are an effective form of enforcement.
“Our findings demonstrate the need for robust, timely, transparent enforcement by HHS, clear pricing data standards, and accountability of hospital executives to attest to the completeness and accuracy of their prices,” the report concluded.
