Fewer than half of hospitals are conforming to the federal price transparency rule that went into effect five years ago, requiring hospitals to publish all prices online, according to a September report.
The hospital compliance rate reached 49 percent in 2026, according to a Sept. 10 report from the Patient Rights Advocate organization, hitting a six-year high and up from 21 percent in the organization’s previous report in November 2024. It reviewed price data files of 2,000 hospitals, out of the more than 6,000 licensed hospitals in the United States.
The organization attributed the improvement to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ extensive communications on technology specifications, which “have allowed hospitals to improve their compliance with price transparency file format standardization and file access requirements.” …