Price Transparency Rules: 2/3 of Hospitals are Not Complying

According to a recent story from The Hill, Patient Rights Advocate.Org (PRA.Org) has issued a report (July 20) that details a shocking (but not surprising?) level of noncompliance with the requirements of the No Surprises Act, which was intended to eliminate surprise medical bills, with a particular focus on disputes arising from the use of out-of-network providers. (I've posted on this subject here (2021), here (same), and here (2023).)

According to the report -- the fifth semi-annual report published by PRA.Org -- compliance has improved steadily since CMS issued its final rule implementing the Act in August 2022, but 64% of the 2,000 hospitals and health systems surveyed remain partially or totally out of compliance. 

One might expect the largest providers to have the resources to implement billing reforms, but the results among that group are pretty dismal:

Compliance varied widely among the largest hospital systems we reviewed. 

•  None (0%) of the hospitals we reviewed which were owned by HCA Healthcare, Tenet Healthcare, Providence, Avera Health, UPMC, Baylor Scott & White Health, and Mercy were found to be fully compliant.
•  Consistent with prior reports, none of the hospitals owned by the largest hospital system in the country, HCA Healthcare, were found to be in full compliance, with a significant amount of its hospitals posting illegible, nonconforming files.
•  Substantial improvements since our last report include: 88% of hospitals owned by CommonSpirit Health, 97% of hospitals owned by Community Health Systems, and 98% of hospitals owned by Kaiser Permanente were found to be in full compliance. 
• Forty hospitals exhibited 'backsliding,' with an assessment of Noncompliant in the current report after having been assessed as Compliant in our prior report.