June 9, 2022 – According to a report from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the federal government has fined Northside Hospital for violating the rights of patients to transparent health care price information. Last year, CMS started to require hospitals across the country to post the price of certain services on their websites.
This measure is intended to help patients shop and plan for the cost of medical care, and the lists are required to be posted in specific formats that are accessible and consumer friendly. After the federal rule was implemented, CMS contacted hospitals across the country that didn’t comply and warned them of the violations before issuing fines.
The AJC examined hospital compliance in Georgia with the new federal rules, scoring each with a report card. Northside scored the lowest in The AJC’s findings.
Northside is the first hospital to receive a fine, according to a CMS spokeswoman. The federal citation and fines were issued because Northside did not provide a machine-readable file listing all charges for items and services, and the “customer-friendly searchable list of certain services and their prices did not function at all when tested by AJC reporters.”
Northside responded by saying that “the information required by the federal government would not actually be useful to consumers because it lacked context. Prices paid by patients can change depending on variable like insurance contract negotiation.”