SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Louisiana Senator John Kennedy introduced an act intended to protect patients and increase penalties for hospitals that do not comply with hospital transparency regulations currently in place Thursday morning.
The Hospital Price Transparency Rule was issued on January 1, 2021, by the Trump Administration requiring hospitals to publish the price of health services so that consumers can make care decisions with cost in mind.
The Department of Health and Human Services created the rule to improve price competition by requiring a gross charge, discounted rate, and payer-specific negotiated rates for all available health services and items. These rates should be on hospital websites as machine-readable files or other consumer-friendly formats.
Despite warnings that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would conduct audits and impose fines of up to $300 per day for non-compliance, many hospitals still have not fully complied.
The introduction of the Hospital Transparency Compliance Enforcement Act by Sen. Kennedy would impose the following penalties.
• Double the current government penalties on non-compliant hospitals. Increase fines to $600 per day for hospitals with 30 or fewer beds, $620 to $11,000 per day for hospitals with 31 to 550 beds, and $11,000 per day for hospitals with more than 550 beds.
• Require all hospitals to comply with the higher penalties within 100 days after the end of the public health emergency.
• Prohibit hospitals from shielding information on their websites using webpage coding.
• Give non-compliant hospitals 60 days after notice of non-compliance to pay their monetary penalty.
• Require the CMS to publish the names of hospitals that have not complied.
“Patients need to know the true cost of hospital items and services. This bill would protect patients by clarifying how much a hospital visit might really cost so that they can make informed choices about their care,” said Kennedy.
You can read the proposed bill in full here.
