Today the Trump Administration released a proposed rule and a final rule designed to increase price transparency through hospitals by giving patients tools to access pricing information through their health plans. The Administration has finalized requirements for hospitals to disclose their standard charges, including negotiated rates with third-party payers. We expect to see similar regulations targeted at most, if not all providers in the future.
From CMS’s Press Release:
If finalized, the proposed Transparency in Coverage rule would require health plans to:
- Give consumers real-time, personalized access to cost-sharing information, including an estimate of their cost-sharing liability for all covered healthcare items and services, through an online tool that most group health plans and health insurance issuers would be required to make available to all of their members, and in paper form, at the consumer’s request. This requirement would empower consumers to shop and compare costs between specific providers before receiving care.
- Disclose on a public website their negotiated rates for in-network providers and allowed amounts paid for out-of-network providers. Making this information available to the public is intended to drive innovation, support informed, price-conscious decision-making, and promote competition in the healthcare industry. Making this information public directly helps the consumer, but, more importantly, creates new opportunities for researchers, employers and other developers to build new tools to help consumers.
The proposed rule would also encourage health insurance issuers to offer new or different plan designs that incentivize consumers to shop for services from lower-cost, higher-value providers by allowing issuers to take credit for “shared savings” payments in their medical loss ratio (MLR) calculations.
In addition, the Administration is finalizing a rule that will require hospitals to provide patients with clear, accessible information about their “standard charges” for the items and services they provide, including through the use of standardized data elements, making it easier to shop and compare across hospitals, as well as mitigating surprises. The final rule will require hospitals to make their standard charges public in two ways beginning in 2021:
- Comprehensive Machine-Readable File: Hospitals will be required to make public all hospital standard charges (including the gross charges, payer-specific negotiated charges, the amount the hospital is willing to accept in cash from a patient, and the minimum and maximum negotiated charges) for all items and services on the Internet in a single data file that can be read by other computer systems. The file must include additional information such as common billing or accounting codes used by the hospital (such as Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes) and a description of the item or service to provide common elements for consumers to compare standard charges from hospital to hospital.
- Display of Shoppable Services in a Consumer-Friendly Manner: Hospitals will be required to make public payer-specific negotiated charges, the amount the hospital is willing to accept in cash from a patient for an item or service, and the minimum and maximum negotiated charges for 300 common shoppable services in a manner that is consumer-friendly and update the information at least annually.
In order to ensure that hospitals comply with the requirements, the final rule provides CMS with new enforcement tools including monitoring, auditing, corrective action plans, and the ability to impose civil monetary penalties of $300 per day. In response to public comments, CMS is finalizing that the effective date of the final rule will be January 1, 2021 to ensure that hospitals have the time to be compliant with these policies.
For more information, read CMS’ Fact Sheets on the Proposed Rule (CMS- 9915 –P), and the Final Rule (CMS-1717-F2).