CMS Urges Hospitals to Disclose Prices, Revamps Meaningful Use Program

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has outlined new changes in its proposed annual inpatient hospital rule, including urging hospitals to disclose their prices to patients and an overhaul of the meaningful use program, reports Modern Healthcare . If the rule is finalized, CMS predicts hospitals will get $4.1 billion more in Medicare inpatient funding next year, compared to last fiscal year's $2.4 billion. The rule is open to comments until June 25. CMS already requires hospitals to either publicly list their standard charges or disclose them upon request, but the agency now says hospitals must post this information. It is unclear whether CMS has the legal authority to make this change, or how difficult implementation could be given the technical nature of hospital billing practices. The agency also wants to overhaul the meaningful use program—which it is renaming "promoting interoperability"—to better highlight measures that require the exchange of health information between providers and patients and give providers incentives to make it easier for patients to access their medical records electronically. The proposed rule encourages the use of application programming interfaces. In addition, CMS proposed eliminating the so-called 25 percent rule that would reduce Medicare reimbursement rates for long-term care hospitals, and scrapping 19 quality measures that hospitals must report on.