The policies in the final rule will further advance the agency’s commitment to increasing price transparency. It includes requirements that would apply to each hospital operating in the United States. 

This final rule implements Section 2718(e) of the Public Health Service Act and improves upon prior agency guidance that required hospitals to make public their standard charges upon request starting in 2015 (79 FR 50146) and subsequently online in a machine-readable format starting in 2019 (83 FR 41144). Section 2718(e) requires each hospital operating within the United States to establish (and update) and make public a yearly list of the hospital’s standard charges for items and services provided by the hospital, including for diagnosis-related groups established under section 1886(d)(4) of the Social Security Act.  In the final rule, we finalize the following: (1) definitions of “hospital”, “standard charges”, and “items and services”; (2) requirements for making public a machine-readable file online that includes all standard charges (including gross charges, discounted cash prices, payer-specific negotiated charges, and de-identified minimum and maximum negotiated charges) for all hospital items and services; (3) requirements for making public discounted cash prices, payer-specific negotiated charges, and de-identified minimum and maximum negotiated charges for at least 300 ‘shoppable’ services (70 CMS-specified and 230 hospital-selected) that are displayed and packaged in a consumer-friendly manner; and (4) monitoring for hospital noncompliance and actions to address hospital noncompliance (including issuing a warning notice, requesting a corrective action plan, and imposing civil monetary penalties), and a process for hospitals to appeal these penalties.  CMS is finalizing that these policies would be effective January 1, 2021.

For More Information:

• View the final rule (CMS-1717-F2): This HHS?approved document has been submitted to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for publication and has not yet been placed on public display or published in the Federal Register. The document may vary slightly from the published document if minor editorial changes have been made during the OFR review process. The document published in the Federal Register is the official HHS?approved document.
• Press Release
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See the full text of this excerpted CMS Fact Sheet (Issued November 15).