Illinois hospitals prepare for new price transparency laws
(The Center Square) – As hospital price transparency laws continue to evolve, Illinois health care facilities are required to keep pace.
New rules took effect July 1, including requiring hospitals to affirm the inclusiveness, accuracy, and completeness of the standard charge information. A third wave of requirements, including new drug reporting and estimated allowed amounts, will go into effect in January 2025.
“We all know about the hospital price transparency rules, the mandates that require hospitals to post the negotiated rate, that cash price, that list price for their services,” said Joe Wisniewski, head of platform growth with Turquoise Health. “We are now at this point where the goal posts have changed within hospital price transparency rules.”
Turquoise Health is in the price transparency business. The company has a patient-facing tool that can be used to search for different prices and services based on distance to their home, price, and quality.
Even though hospital price rules have been around for years, some health care facilities have been slow to comply. The group Patient Rights Advocate (PRA) released a report earlier this year that showed only around 40% of Illinois hospitals they investigated were compliant.
“They know the dollars and cents that they do charge, all this is supposed to do by law is to allow all of us to be able to see these prices,” said PRA CEO Cynthia Fisher.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the implementation of the price transparency rule, has issued approximately 1,200 warning notices to hospitals that have been non-compliant.
