On August 2, 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule that was intended to empower patients through better access to hospital price information.  Current laws already required hospitals to make public a list of their standard charges, but the new requirement which became effective on January 1, 2019, required hospitals to publish a list of all charges in machine readable format via the internet, in an XML or CSV format.   The final rule also required providers to update their posted charges no less than one time per year. Read more