Ever since the Trump administration’s hospital price transparency rule was implemented, hospitals have been required to post their secret prices – cash prices, list prices and ALL negotiated rates with every health plan. But they have a) not complied at all, b) put out garbage files with just averages or a bunch of “not applicable” in every row, or the most annoying of all, c) they’ve put out the file but in a format that is not accessible to normal users. And even when their files were usable, shoppers had to search high and low to find every hospital’s website where these files were posted. They had to know which hospitals exist in a certain area, go to those hospitals’ websites, and navigate the intentionally difficult path (which the regulation expressly prohibited) to find the file.

That nightmare is now over. For the first time ever, all hospital files are now in an interactive, searchable tool, and in a simple .xls format for users to access. Thanks to PatientRightsAdvocate.org, a grassroots patients group laser-focused on price transparency, patients can simply search their town, see a list of every hospital and download each hospital’s pricing files in format they can actually read. This is a public service on a grand scale, and it’ll be interesting to see the new and diverse uses that the public makes of this critical pricing information. Hospitals have nowhere to hide anymore – they should just simply start complying, and compete on price and quality the way it works in every other industry.

Test-drive the searchable, interactive tool here.

Watch a quick video tutorial about how to use the tool here.