Only seven of 63 hospitals and healthcare facilities in Nevada are meeting the year-old law requiring them to post their real prices for a list of 300 services online.
The report by the group PatientRightsAdvocate.org says one of the seven hospitals that is meeting the terms of the price transparency law is Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center. The other Northern Nevada hospital that meets the requirements is Northern Nevada Medical Center in Sparks.
The remaining 56 Nevada hospitals are listed as non-compliant including publicly-operated facilities such as University Medical Center in Las Vegas.
Four Renown facilities in the Reno area are listed as non-compliant as is Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center.
Cynthia Fisher, CEO of the organization, said the non-compliant hospitals have a lot of company. She said only 14.3 percent of the 500 hospitals surveyed nationwide are complying with the year-old Hospital Price Transparency rule.
The law requires hospitals to post a complete, machine readable file of standard charges for 300 procedures, a list of national drug codes and associated charges for each of the drugs and pharmacy items offered, negotiated rates and charges including the names of each third-party payer and discounted cash prices if offered.
Fisher said failure to post pricing blocks the consumer from knowing the competition, seeking fair and equitable prices and having the choice to lower their costs.
Patient Rights Advocate is a 501(c)3, federally-certified non-profit, non-partisan group founded to advocate for transparency in hospital pricing. The group is seeking to empower consumers to hopefully make providers and insurers compete by lowering prices and improving quality in what they describe as “the broken American healthcare system.”
The report makes no judgment on the quality of care offered by any of the hospitals.
