H
owever wonderful it might (or might not) be for healthcare
pricing to be transparent, what does it matter if you have no
clear understanding of related costing and other financial
and billing matters within your operations?
With high hopes from some and loud mopes from others, President
Trump recently signed an executive order directing federal agencies
to develop regulations to foster transparency of healthcare price and
quality data. Among many other directives, hospitals would publicly
post standard charge information, including charges based on negoti-
ated rates, and healthcare providers, health insurance issuers and self-
insured group health plans would
provide or facilitate access to infor-
mation about out-of-pocket costs to
patients.
As of this writing, CMS has
released proposed rules
that would require hospi-
tals to:
• make public their
"standard charges" for all
items and services;
• post those charges on the
internet in a machine-readable
How Transparent Is Healthcare Transparency?
The window into price and quality data could be as clear as mud.
Regulatory Affairs
Mark F. Weiss, JD, and Cecilia Kronawitter
• WINDOW DRESSING Before you can get a clear
picture into the financial guts of health care, you
must first clean up your facility's financial opera-
tions.
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 3 3
