On November 12, 2020, a federal rule was upheld requiring transparency of healthcare prices. Subsequent to the new rule, the Employers’ Forum of Indiana conducted an independent assessment of Indiana hospitals in relation to their performance with the federal CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule.
The aim of this assessment was to improve the consumer price transparency experience by partnering with hospitals to improve their hospital price transparency efforts.
In total, 118 Indiana hospitals were assessed. Each hospital was scored by at least two evaluators using an internal rubric with a maximum score of 8 points. The scored rubric, CMS Rule, and a best practice example was sent to every hospital executive with a request that they inform the Forum of any changes they wish to make as we would be happy to re-score them prior to publishing this report.
In addition, the Forum provided individualized considerations for improvement for low scoring hospitals. A dozen hospitals/health-systems, representing 20% of total hospitals assessed, contacted the Forum and we worked collaboratively to address transparency issues. Nearly all Forum recommendations were implemented.
After re-scoring, the final result of the hospital price transparency assessment for 118 Indiana hospitals is as follows:
- 20.3% of hospitals scored 8 points (the best score)
- 55.9% of hospitals scored 7 points
- 14.4% of hospitals scored 6 points
- 9.3% of hospitals scored 5 points or less (4 hospitals scored 1 point, the worst score)
Over the course of this assessment it was apparent that additional CMS clarity of the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule may help reduce the vast variability in the presentation of the shoppable services information. While many hospitals include price transparency information on their website, improvements can be made to increase accessibility and understandability of this information to consumers.
Of 118 hospitals analyzed, the mean hospital score for this study was 6.72 out of 8.