The new year ushered in a final slate of updates to the federal rules for how hospitals have to disclose their prices, and experts are optimistic the changes will make the data more helpful in identifying less expensive providers.
The updates are fairly straightforward. The government is requiring hospitals to include additional pieces of data to improve their consistency and make it easier to compare across hospitals. Jan. 1 was the deadline for hospitals to make the changes to their files.
Specifically, hospitals must now include three new fields: “estimated allowed amount,” “drug unit of measurement and drug type of measurement,” and “modifiers.” It’s the final of three phases in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ hospital price transparency rollout. The first phase was the original rollout in 2021, followed by an update in July 2024.
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