NYC hospitals dragging feet on price transparency
If the hospitals of America’s most populous city are any sort of bellwether, CMS is going to have its hands full trying to enforce compliance with the Trump Administration’s executive order on price transparency.
Of course, the rule’s days may be numbered with a new federal government soon to be seated.
In any case, consider: Entering the third full week since CMS was to begin requiring hospitals to list their actual prices, only one of New York City’s major hospitals seems to be behaving as ordered.
That’s according to a journalistic investigation conducted by public radio station WNYC and an online news outlet it owns, Gothamist, in an article posted Jan. 18.
The compliant system is NYC Health + Hospitals, the biggest municipal healthcare system in the country, “although others say they’re working on it,” Gothamist reports.
The stragglers may be wise to hope for the best while preparing for the worst. CMS could not only cut off Medicare payments to non-compliers but also fine them $300 per day.
The latter threat has set observers to stating the obvious.
Three hundred dollars per day is “a flea on an elephant financially if you’re looking at a large multi-million- or multi-billion- dollar system,” Niall Brennan, head of the Healthcare Cost Institute, tells Gothamist. “Hospitals are certainly not going to comply with this because they’re afraid of financial penalties, so we will have to rely on them to comply with it because they’re afraid of the reputational consequences.”
A number of readers pile on in the article’s comments section, some of them displaying the cynical sensibilities without which NYC wouldn’t be NYC.
“$300! Good God, y’all,” writes one anonymous interlocutor. “That’s the cost of three Tylenol (during non-peak hours).”
Other watchers and stakeholders are advocating for serious change.
For example, Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York, tells Gothamist it should be the government’s job to make hospital prices accessible to all.
“Let people do comparison shopping like they do now through the [Affordable Care Act insurance] exchanges,” she says. “It should be done at the federal level or, at the very least, at the state level. It should not be done hospital by hospital.”
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.