The Trump Administration’s price transparency rules are still set to go into effect in January of 2021. While hospitals may be hoping this will be delayed due to COVID, and that may still happen, there’s no guarantee. The rules dictate that hospitals will have to display the cash and negotiated rates for 300 “shoppable” services, for all accepted insurance plans, on their website. So are they ready?
$300 per day penalty – is it enough?
If hospitals miss the deadline to place shoppable services on their website, a $300 per day penalty will be levied. But if your facility makes hundreds of millions of dollars on average, maybe $300 per day is just a rounding error?!
I’m not suggesting they should fine hospitals a higher dollar amount. Because in truth, providing all of the various types of pricing (bundled rates, cash rates, negotiated rates) for 300 shoppable services , while totally doable, will take a great deal of time. It also depends on the effort hospitals will put forth. Will they just list a huge readable database of pricing along with each procedure? Or will they make it more user friendly and searchable.
Time will tell whether any, some or most hospitals meet the deadline. In the meantime, we will always have pricing available and searchable on our website.
Video: Background to the Trump Price Transparency Rule
Physicians and outpatient facilities: this affects you too!
Physicians, surgery centers and independent practitioners need to get ahead of the curve. Don’t wait for hospitals and insurers to list your rates. Price transparency, when done correctly, can be a customer service satisfier. Whether it’s providing the consumer the bundled rate, the negotiated rate or the cash rate for their healthcare services, the consumer will find it much easier to determine their costs through the physician’s site rather than a clunky hospital or insurer’s site. So don’t think this only affects hospitals. Consumers will expect price transparency from you too!
Dr. Jonathan Kaplan is a board-certified plastic surgeon based in San Francisco, CA and founder/CEO of BuildMyBod Health, a price transparency-lead generation platform. You can watch him operate and educate @realdrbae on Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
