AHA reports to Congress on the steps taken to meet new CMS rules

The folks who represent vast numbers of U.S. health systems have finally spoken out before Congress on the industry’s response to Congressional efforts to force greater pricing transparency within the traditional health system.

Appearing before the House Ways & Means Committee, The American Hospital Association (AHA) lauded itself and its members for the steps they have taken to meet the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ tough new rules. It took advantage of the moment by pushing back at the lawmakers with a list of measures they and CMS could take to further help hospitals achieve compliance.

AHA led by underscoring the industry’s positive responses to the transparency demands. Among them: establishment of a Price Transparency Task Force; multipronged member education initiatives; a “multi-stakeholder intensive design process … to develop solutions to improve the patient financial experience of care;” its response to the machine-readable requirement; and more.

Then came the good stuff. Referring to CMS’s process for citing and penalizing hospitals for non-compliance, AHA said:

“CMS found that in 2022, 70% of hospitals complied with both components of the Hospital Price Transparency Rule. … This is an increase from 27% in 2021. Moreover, when looking at each individual component of the rule, 82% of hospitals met the consumer-friendly display of shoppable services information requirement in 2022 (up from 66% in 2021) and 82% met the machine-readable file requirement (up from 30% in 2021). These numbers show significant progress on the part of hospitals and health systems — while acknowledging the work that remains — in implementing these requirements.” (AHA emphasis.)

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The AHA statement then cited more good behavior by hospitals before moving on to list ways CMS and Congress could assist hospitals in their quest to meet the new laws. Its recommendations included reviewing and streamlining existing transparency policies; soliciting more input from patients, providers and payers on ways to make the policies as patient-centered as possible; and imploring Congress to take a break “from advancing additional legislation or regulations that may further confuse or complicate providers’ ability to provide meaningful price estimates while adding unnecessary costs to the health care system.”