Roughly half of hospitals complying with price transparency rules: Report

Even though compliance rates have reached a record high, only about half of U.S. hospitals are in full compliance with federal price transparency rules, according to a report released Thursday.

The nonprofit group Patient Rights Advocate (PRA) released its eighth hospital price transparency report in which it found 49.4 percent of hospitals it reviewed were in compliance with the federal hospital price transparency rules that have been in place since 2021.

With nearly half of all hospitals in compliance, this report marks the highest rate recorded by the organization since it began tracking in July 2021. There was also a 28-point jump in compliance from the previous report in 2024.

“Overall compliance with formatting requirements improved, but a substantial number of hospitals posted algorithms that failed to satisfy the ‘all necessary information’ requirement. Many of the algorithms were complex and opaque, preventing MRF users from calculating any price at all,” the PRA’s report stated, referring to machine-readable files.

For its report, the PRA reviewed 2,000 hospitals, of which 988 were found to be in full compliance with federal rules. Among all hospitals, only 18 percent posed dollar-and-cents prices for at least half of their items and services.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “has made progress enforcing its hospital transparency rules, but this report shows that most hospitals still owe patients clear, usable dollars-and-cents prices they can look up before receiving care,” PRA founder and Chair Cynthia Fisher said in a statement.

In June, the Trump administration issued warnings to more than 500 hospitals over failure to comply with pricing transparency requirements. The letters included requests for corrective action. Hospitals that failed address these issues faced penalties of up to $2 million per year.