Hospital compliance with price transparency requirements surges

When Texas lawmakers passed legislation requiring hospitals to publish their prices in 2021, many faced unanticipated challenges, including information technology systems that were inadequate for storing and updating pricing data and concerns about whether complicated health care pricing data could appear ambiguous or confusing to consumers.

However, Texas 2036’s latest assessment conducted this summer found a surge in compliance with state hospital price transparency laws over the past two years.

As of April 2022, only 33% of Texas hospitals appeared to be posting compliant machine-readable files with these real prices. Fortunately, by October 2022, that score had nearly doubled to 65%, indicating significant progress.

That score dipped slightly to 63% in April 2023, but following Texas 2036’s summer 2024 reassessment of compliance from data collected in April 2024, Texas 2036 has now found that 81% of Texas hospitals now appear to be complying with the machine-readable file requirements.

“Texas families deserve access to affordable, high-quality health care, and this surge in compliance with state price transparency laws demonstrates that the Texas Legislature is taking meaningful steps toward making this a reality,” said Charles Miller, director of health and economic mobility policy at Texas 2036.

In the latest assessment, among those hospitals that were not assessed to be compliant, 20 (4%) provided incomplete information, 56 (9%) only provided access to the chargemaster — a list of “billable charges” that rarely reflect the real price, in contrast to the actual, negotiated prices the law requires, and 36 hospitals (6%) provided no pricing data.

Learn more about hospital price transparency and explore the data in Texas by visiting https://texas2036.org/health-price-transparency/.