The Feb. 29 report from PatientRightsAdvocate.org found that just 689 (34.5%) of 2,000 hospitals it examined were fully compliant with federal price transparency rules. That was down from 721 (36%) that were found to be fully compliant from the organization’s last report, released in July.
HFMA Director of Policy and Analysis Shawn Stack said in a March 7 news release that PatientRightsAdvocate.org “continues to release reports and scorecards that are an irresponsible mix of misleading, incomplete and incorrect.”
HFMA outlined several key points of contention in its release. Among them, it said PatientRightsAdvocate.org accuses many hospitals of not including all their standard charge files related to accepted insurance plans. However, PatientRightsAdvocate.org “assumes that when a hospital negotiates rates with a payer it secures negotiated rates with all plans and products under that umbrella. This is incorrect and leads to PRA’s overstatement of noncompliance.”
The organization also accused PatientRightsAdvocate.org of not understanding the definition of machine-readable files, “leading to additional confusion and misinterpretation of federal requirements.”
PatientRightsAdvocate.org’s reports have also been criticized by the American Hospital Association, which previously alleged the July report “blatantly misconstrues, ignores and mischaracterizes hospitals’ compliance with federal price transparency regulations.”
Read HFMA’s full statement here.
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