Let's dive in to the pricing data from 2000+ hospitals. What is the state of compliance with the January 1st price transparency rule?  

It's been a month since I last wrote about the state of hospital price transparency. Since then, we've combed back through all hospital websites - if you wonder what that's like, imagine an Easter egg hunt except the eggs are hidden many towns over, they may not be eggs, and the ones that are eggs might be empty on the inside.

Despite the difficulty finding data, we at Turquoise have over 2,000 hospitals' rates in our transparency database (with hundreds more in the queue). We've heard from many health systems still working on it. And we're encouraged by the thousands that have complied (or nearly complied) with earnest efforts to meet the price transparency final rule. We're also encouraged by health systems (Advocate Aurora, Hartford) that have improved their files following the initial posting.

If you represent a hospital that has improved your files, feel free to let us know & consider becoming Turquoise Verified (a free service for compliant providers that helps patients know the rates are up to date). It's extremely important to us that we represent this data faithfully.

So, have hospitals complied or what?

As of mid-March, we've counted 1835 hospitals with a machine readable file compliance score of 3 or greater (cash rates + at least some insurance rates), and 1672 hospitals with a score of 4 or better (click here for a refresher on our compliance ratings).

We still have several hundred hospitals in our queue (many independents) that are not yet reflected in any of the below data.

While we expect to end up with about 2,500 compliant providers by May, the winds are shifting. We've recently heard directly from several health systems working on publishing files in April (a great sign for patients), and if you're patient enough (pun definitely not intended), all rates are coming 1/1/22  via the Transparency in Coverage rule for payers.

In this visualization, hover over (or click on mobile) to view tooltips about each provider's rates data. Note: data as of March 2021, please reach out if interested in the most up-to-date data.

What do the rates look like across markets?

Our team has invested a lot of work (and machine learning) to clean this data and make it apples to apples comparable. We've only just begun exploring pricing across the country, and we encourage you to license the data and dive in yourself.

Here's a visualization that allows you to view commercial, medicare and cash pay (discounted cash pay if provided) rates for the below common services. Note, these rates include facility fees only and will not reflect the professional component of the bill.

  • ER Level 5 (a common and expensive billed ER code - reserved for patients with chest pain, abdominal pain - read more here).
  • Diagnostic colonoscopy (lots of people get these, ya know)
  • New patient visit, 45 minutes
  • CT Scan of the Pelvis, with contrast (a common shoppable CT)

FYI - the machine readable file required disclosure of all services, not just shoppable services.

In this visualization, hover over (or click on mobile) to explore rates for a particular hospital. You may also apply filters and narrow in on rates by region. Note: some providers may omit a given procedure for a given payer, for several reasons. Data is as of March 2021, please reach out if interested in the most up-to-date data.

Explore common services and rates on a map

Explore common services and rates within a provider

What do you discover as you're exploring the data? We'd love to hear and share insight from readers in our next blog post. Contact info@turquoise.health

Where are the rest of the hospitals?

Turquoise regularly reviews provider websites to find new price transparency data. While many providers have recently posted data, there are still a significant chunk of hospitals that have not posted a machine readable file. Here is an overview of hospitals for which Turquoise has not been able to find a compliant file with negotiated rates. Excluded from this map are hundreds of hospitals currently in review with our team, for which we are not comfortable attaching a "file not found" designation. Do you see a hospital reported as missing a machine readable file that has now posted a file? Please notify us at info@turquoise.health

Note: data as of March 2021, please reach out if interested in the most up-to-date data.