Health technology company Turquoise Health published its first "Price Transparency Impact Report" Oct. 18, which found that nearly 5,000 hospitals and 80 insurance carriers have posted negotiated rates.
The report tracks the healthcare industry's progress to date on price transparency compliance and provides a road map of achieving industry wide adoption, according to an Oct. 18 news release. The Hospital Price Transparency Rule went into effect in January 2021. A law requiring payers nationwide to publish the cost of nearly every healthcare service they've negotiated with providers went into effect July 1, 2022.
"We expect the initial phase of price transparency adoption to take five years," Turquoise Health CEO Chris Severn said in the release. "After seven quarters of transparency, progress is evident. 65% of hospitals have published robust negotiated rates. Additionally, 80 carriers have also published rates, representing over the majority covered lives in the United States."
Turquoise said in the report it visits every price transparency URL for every hospital in the U.S. on the first of the month of every quarter. It downloads the machine-readable file present on the hospital's page whether or not the file has been updated recently. Turquoise writes a custom code to translate the contents of the files into a common database ontology. It then analyzes the contents of the files relative to 60 data attributes correlated to the CMS requirements: list price, cash price, and payer negotiated rates for all items and services. Turquoise then gives a transparency score from one to five based on weighting algorithms relative to seven different hospital subcategories.
Three findings from the report:
1. Seventy-six percent of hospitals have posted a machine-readable file.
2. Sixty-five percent have posted a machine-readable file with negotiated rates.
3. Sixty-three percent have posted a machine-readable file with cash rates.
Read the full report here.