To comply or not to comply: a study of the factors affecting compliance with the 2021 hospital price transparency mandate

Abstract

This analysis uses hospital-level aggregation of prices of outpatient procedures from 1,595 hospitals along with hospital price transparency data to identify the market-level and hospital-level factors associated with compliance with the 2021 CMS hospital price transparency mandate. I find that the largest hospitals are about 25% more likely to comply with the mandate than the median hospital, suggesting a fixed cost burden to compliance. I also find some evidence that hospitals in less competitive markets are more likely to comply, and there does not appear to be any connection between the price of a hospital's services and its compliance with the mandate.