Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Informatics
Date Submitted: Apr 18, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 23, 2019 - Jun 18, 2019
Date Accepted: Oct 22, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Just Because (most) Hospitals are Publishing Charges Doesn’t Mean Prices are More Transparent
ABSTRACT
Background:
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently mandated that all hospitals publish their charge description masters (CDM) online, in a machine-readable format, by January 1, 2019. Additionally, CMS recommended that CDM data be made available in a manner that was consumer-friendly and accessible to patients.
Objective:
We examined all hospitals across the state of Pennsylvania to understand policy compliance and user friendliness of posted CDM data.
Methods:
A cross-sectional analysis was performed, quantifying hospital website compliance with recent CMS policies requiring hospitals to publish their CDM. Data was collected from all Pennsylvania hospital websites. Consumer-friendliness was assessed based on searchability, number of website clicks to data, and supplemental education accompanying CDM.
Results:
Most hospitals (80%) were compliant, but significant variation in data presentation occurred. Mean number of website clicks to CDM was 3.7 (standard deviation: 1.3; range: 1-8). 23.1% of compliant hospitals provided no supplemental educational with their CDM.
Conclusions:
While disclosure of charges has improved, the data are not sufficient to reasonably influence patient decision-making.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.