Hospitals accused of hiding prices for services
Group cheeked 32 in NJ, found 3 fully compliant
By: Scott Fallon
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... the push in recent years to require hospitals to post their prices Online had a simple but profound goal: Patients could shop around for the first time, forcing competition among health care are providers and ultimately lowering costs or a least keeping them stable.
.....
In a state as densely populated as New Jersey with many health care operations, that domino effect would work only if all 70 hospitals posted all their prices uniformly. New Jersey hospitals say they have been following federal requirements on pricing. But a national advocacy group says only three of 32 hospitals it analyzed recently were fully compliant.
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"By keeping their prices hidden, hospitals continue to block Garden State consumers form their right to compare prices and protect themselves from overcharges," said Cynthia Fisher, founder of PatientRightsAdvocate.org .
..... The New Jersey Hospital Association criticized the findings issued last week [11/21/2024] by
PatientRightsAdvocate.org as "wildly out of step with other reports" that analyze transparency.
..... The report places New Jersey in the bottom half of states in terms of pricing compliance, at 9%. No state did better than 60%, and neighboring states varied widely, with Delaware and Connecticut at 0%, new York at 8% and Pennsylvania at 30%.
..... Since 2021, hospitals have been required to post prices Online for items, services and drugs by all payers - from private insurance to Medicare to private pay - along with minimum and maximum negotiate rates. They must also display prices for 300 of the most common services in a consumer-frendly format or with a price estimator tool.
..... Regulators have citied no New Jersey hospital for non-compliance, said Cathy Bennett, CEO of the New Jersey Hospital Association.
..... "Hospitals' commitment to helping consumers has grown even further with price estimator tools, lists of charges and a wealth of other information readily accessible on their website," Bennett said in a statement.
..... But critics say the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services allows hospitals to provide a confusing array of information with "estimates, averages and algorithms." Medical bills are often much higher for common procedures than the high estimates posted on hospital websites.
..... Other information is extremely hard to find and decipher, kept in mammoth spreadsheets hat often have hundreds of thousands of data rows.
..... A team from PatientRightsAdvocate.org spent months this year [2024] examining the pricing at 2,000 hospitals nationwide and assessed whether they met 15 criteria, including the easier-to-access 300 services and estimator tool. The 29 New Jersey hospitals that were not fully compliant had a range of problems, from data formating to failing to include pricing from all payers and plans.
..... The press for transparency comes at a time when hospital prises have increased substantially in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, as medical centers look to recoup costs during a period of high inflation.
..... Consumers are being hit with higher insurance premiums, whether private or government-issued. Health care costs for employ-based plans are expected to rise 5.8% on average per employee in 2025, the third year in a row when it is more than 5%.
Fully compliant
* The three New Jersey hospitals deemed to be fully with the federal rule are:
* Clara Masss Medical Center, Belleville.
* St Joseph's University Medical Center, Paterson.
* St Mary's General Hospital, Passaic.