Hospitals Fall Short of Price Transparency Rule Compliance

July 22, 2021 - Hospitals were never thrilled with the Hospital Price Transparency rule, and a recent independent review shows they have done little to comply with the regulation aimed at helping consumers choose affordable care and services.

Hospitals Fail to Comply with Hospital Price Transparency Rule

Only 5.6 percent of hospitals are compliant with the hospital price transparency rule just over six months after its implementation, according to a report on 500 randomly selected US hospitals conducted by PatientRightsAdvocate.org.

The Hospital Price Transparency rule requires hospitals to display files on their websites containing gross charges, payer-specific negotiated charges, discounted cash prices, and deidentified minimum and maximum negotiated charges. All hospitals also must display at least 300 shoppable services that a healthcare consumer may schedule in advance.

Researchers identified a hospital as noncompliant if it omitted any of the five criteria imposed by the rule, if data fields were blank, if it did not post all negotiated payer rates, or if the hospital’s price estimator tool did not show both the negotiated rates and discounted cash prices.

Approximately 80 percent of the 500 hospitals in the PatientRightsAdvocate.org report failed to publish payer-specific negotiated charges as the rule requires, and over half did not publish any negotiated rates at all. Additionally, 39 percent did not publish any discounted cash prices. READ MORE

Neighborhood Disadvantage Significantly Affects COVID-19 Outcomes

Researchers have found neighborhood disadvantage was linked with subway ridership during stay-at-home orders, acting as a proxy for understanding COVID health disparities.

A study at Mount Sinai led by Daniel Carrión, PhD, MPH, and his colleagues created a neighborhood-level COVID-19 inequity index for New York City, combining elements of social disadvantage like employment, commuting needs, population density, access to food, access to care, and socioeconomic status.

The research team found a strong link between COVID-19 and the subway. Neighborhoods that ranked higher on the COVID-19 inequity index—meaning that neighborhood saw more factors that could put inhabitants at risk—also had higher subway ridership even after COVID-19 forced city-wide shutdowns. READ MORE

Machine Learning Successfully Predicts Cancer Mortality Risks

Researchers have created an artificial intelligence tool using socioeconomic and clinical data to predict mortality risks in patients with cancer.

Researchers conducted the study by selecting 3671 patients from a de-identified database representing a large community-based hematology/oncology practice. Data from the de-identified database included electronic health records (EHRs), billing data, and socioeconomic determinants of care.

The machine-learning algorithm was able to accurately predict the 30-day mortality among patients with cancer. The study also examined the algorithm’s ability to predict 60-, 90-, and 180-day mortality, which reflected similar results.

Researchers concluded that the machine learning algorithm’s ability to identify patients with cancer at risk for 30-day mortality has the potential to improve outcomes for patients with reversible clinical factors. Additionally, the AI system can prevent unnecessary and harmful care for those nearing end of life. READ MORE

Tax Exemptions for Employers Fuels Spending on Health Plans

Employer-sponsored health plans’ healthcare spending shows that healthcare coverage tax exemptions for employers are worthwhile, according to the American Benefits Council. Employer-sponsored health plans spent $814B on 2019 benefits, over $5 on healthcare benefits for every $1 lost in tax revenue due to tax exemptions.

The American Benefits Council assessed employer spending from 2019 using data from the Joint Committee on Taxation’s Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures For Fiscal Years 2019-2023 alongside the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ National Income and Product Accounts Table 6.11.

According to the Joint Committee’s tax data, the tax exemptions for employer contributions to healthcare coverage totaled $152.5 billion. This means that employers retained $152.5 billion because they covered premiums, healthcare, and long-term care insurance premiums. READ MORE

Paving a Path to Telehealth, RPM Sustainability in California

The Northeast Valley Health Corporation (NEVHC) is building off a virtual care strategy launched during the pandemic to develop telehealth and remote patient monitoring programs that address barriers to care for its underserved patients.

Long restrained by restrictive Medicare rules, FQHCs took advantage of COVID-19 emergency waivers to jump on the connected health bandwagon with both feet, expanding access to care for some of the nation’s most underserved populations

One FQHC looking to build on that momentum is the NEVHC, a California-based provider and one of the nation’s largest community health centers. Working off of a virtual care strategy launched during the height of the pandemic, NEVHC has launched a remote patient monitoring platform aimed at addressing some of the biggest barriers to care faced by its patients. READ MORE

Janssen Vaccine Effective Against COVID-19 Variants

Johnson & Johnson recently announced that its COVID-19 vaccine elicited strong antibody and T-cell immune responses as long as eight months after vaccination.

Results published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the vaccine elicited dual mechanisms of protection against the virus, including against disease caused by B.1.617.2 and other SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. The variants include B.1.1.7, B.1.351, P.1, B.1.429, B.1.617.1, and the original Wuhan strain.

Overall, the data suggests an expansion of neutralizing antibodies over eight months, the observations of durable T-cell responses, and the suggestion of B-cell maturation. The data extends previously published results about the vaccine’s ability to elicit multiple components of the immune system in individuals. READ MORE