AHA responds to CMS request for information on hospital price transparency accuracy, completeness

The AHA yesterday responded to a request for information from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on price transparency policy, specifically the accuracy and completeness of hospitals’ machine-readable files. The AHA said that determining the accuracy and completeness of machine-readable file data is challenging given that exact rates do not exist in the way they were envisioned by the policy. In addition, the AHA said that additional enforcement of hospital price transparency requirements is not necessary due to CMS' improved enforcement efforts.  

The AHA encouraged CMS to instead focus its efforts on the information that will best help patients understand and compare their expected costs prior to care and on streamlining price transparency policies to remove complexity and administrative burden.