Effective January 1, 2019, CMS required that a hospital publish their chargemaster online for consumers. At the time it was made clear by CMS that this would be the first of potentially many initiatives geared toward increasing transparency around hospital and other provider fees. The goal of all of these changes is to improve the ease and accuracy with which consumers can understand the expected out-of-pocket expenditures for patient care.  Read more

Read Unpacking CMS’ 2020 Proposed Expanded Rules for Hospital Price Transparency to gain a better understanding of the Proposed Rules for Hospital Price Transparency released by CMS on July 29, 2019. The comment period ended September 27, 2019, and the final rule is forthcoming. Read more

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