Price transparency implementation: Accessibility of hospital chargemasters and variation in hospital pricing after CMS mandate.

BACKGROUND

National regulations have increasingly focused on transparency in hospital billing and pricing practices. A January 2019 federal mandate required hospitals to publicize lists of billable procedures and items known as chargemasters.

METHODS

We identified the 500 top self-pay/uninsured revenue grossing hospitals nationally and searched each hospital's website for a chargemaster. Corresponding items were matched across chargemasters. Intrahospital and interhospital price variation were calculated. To investigate variation in item naming, a name variant and fuzzy matching search was conducted for fifteen common chargemaster items.

RESULTS

Of 500 hospitals in this study, 69 (13.8%) had chargemasters that were inaccessible and 30 (6.0%) had chargemasters that did not meet mandated requirements. Among the remaining 431 hospitals, the mean interhospital and intrahospital variation in pricing for identical items was 18% (SD 28%) and 28% (SD 29%), respectively. 388 hospitals listed multiple prices for the same item, with a mean of 687.3 duplicated items (SD 1157.7). Among fifteen common chargemaster items, each item was associated with an average of 275 (SD 213) unique name variants. Interhospital price variation of these items ranged from 53% (transthoracic echocardiogram) to 243% (furosemide 40 mg).

CONCLUSIONS

Many chargemasters have barriers to access, and item naming is inconsistent across chargemasters. There is significant interhospital price variation for similar items.

IMPLICATIONS

Chargemasters are uninterpretable for the purpose of patient price comparison in their current form. Further regulatory efforts are necessary to increase price transparency and enhance the ability of patients to compare hospital prices.