The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) continue to make their mark on hospital price transparency regulations as they recently issued three civil monetary penalty (CMP) notices. The CMP notifications were administered due to violations of the Hospital Price Transparency (HPT) Rule. For context, the HPT Rule calls for hospitals to publicly disclose their standard charges of services and items provided.
These latest notifications now bring the total CMP notices to seven hospitals, attributed to contraventions of the HPT Rule. This is a clear signal that the CMS remains committed to enforcing full price disclosure from the hospital sector, as part of efforts to increase the financial transparency afforded to patients in the healthcare process.
While the full details of the CMP notices aren’t publicly accessible, we can deduce that these enforcement actions from CMS underscore its resolve to ensure that hospitals are held accountable for maintaining price transparency in accordance with the HPT Rule.
This increased enforcement efforts by the CMS is arguably a wake-up call to all hospitals for the need to adhere strictly to the price transparency regulations or risk facing similar punitive actions. This signifies the need for legal professionals in hospitals to closely monitor their organization’s compliance with healthcare pricing transparency regulations.
For more detailed insights, you can read the full report by King and Spalding at Jdsupra.com.