Source: http://www.healthinfolaw.org/comparative-analysis/public-access-provider-charge-data-reporting-50-state-comparison
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 12:21:19+00:00

Document:
A majority of states require providers to report charge data to state departments of health in order to contain costs. Of these states, many require that charge data be released to the public either directly or in the form of reports put out by the state. This map shows those states that require public access to provider charge data through reports or availability on a websiteand those states that do not require provider charge data to be made public. Please see our other map on provider charge data reporting for more information.
A.R.S. § 36-125-.05: Hospitals must report average charge per day to the Department of Health. Emergency departments must report charges for outpatient services to the Department. All reports must be available to public inspection.
A.R.S. § 36-436: A new hospital or nursing facility must file a schedule of its rates and charges and rules that relate to those rates and charges with the Director of the Department of Health Services for review. The Director must review the schedule and publish information on gross charges within 60 days from when the hospital or nursing facility files it.
A.R.S. 36-436.01: Once the Director reviews the schedule, it must be conspicuously posted in the hospital’s reception area and in the hospital’s outpatient treatment centers or nursing care institutions. Another copy must be kept in the reception area to be available for public inspection upon request. Licensed health care facilities classified as outpatient treatment centers and home health agencies must file a copy of the schedule with the Director before implementing those rates and charges.
A.C.A. § 20-7-305: The Department of Human Services must also provide data to the Arkansas Hospital Association for its price transparency and consumer driven health care project that will make price and quality information about Arkansas hospitals available to the general public.
Health & Safety Code § 1339.56: Each hospital must compile a list of 25 common outpatient and inpatient procedures and annually submit to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development the hospital’s average charges for those procedures. The Office must post the list of average prices on its website. Hospitals must provide the lists above to any person who requests them.
C.R.S.A. § 10-16-111: The Commissioner must aggregate the data submitted for all carriers and publish the information on the division's web site. The Commissioner must also submit an annual report to the general assembly on cost.
C.R.S.A. § 25-3-705: The Commissioner of Insurance must work with the Colorado Hospital Association to develop a consumer friendly resource for hospital charges. The Hospital Association must make the information reported available on a publicly available website by August each year.
C.R.S.A. § 10-16-134: The Commissioner of Insurance must post average reimbursement rates reported by each carrier to the Division’s website and ensure that the website is easy to understand and navigate by consumers.
16 Del. Code § 2006: Raw data are not considered public record and may not be made available for public inspection. All compilations prepared by the state agency for dissemination are considered public records and must be accessible by the public.
16 Del. Code § 2003: The state agency must periodically disseminate reports based on the data collected in § 2004 on charge levels, age specific utilization patterns, morbidity patterns, patient origin, and trends in health care charges.
F.S.A. § 408.05: The Agency for Health Care Administration must make available performance measures, benefit design, and premium cost data from health plans. In addition, the Agency must publish on the Agency’s website undiscounted charges for the 150 of the most commonly performed adult and pediatric procedures.
20 ILCS 2215/4-2: The Department is also required to make available on its website a consumer guide and a hospital report card in order to educate and assist individuals in making health care decisions. The Consumer Guide must include information on at least 30 inpatient conditions and procedures that the Department has identified as having the greatest variation in patient charges and quality of care.
Ind. Code § 16-21-6-7: The Department must ensure that any analysis done on charge data is open to the public.
K.R.S. § 216.2929: The Cabinet on Health and Family Services must make available on its website information on charges for health care services in easy to understand language that allows consumers to make comparisons between each hospital and ambulatory facility, by payer, and for other provider groups as data becomes available.
L.S.A. § 40:1300.112: The Department of Health and Hospitals with the Health Data Panel must identify the health care cost, quality, and performance data elements to be reported to the Department using existing national standards to allow consumers to meaningfully compare costs of specific health care services among various health care providers. The Department must also provide a process for internet publication of the health care cost, quality, and performance data collected to be able to be accessed and used by consumers.
Maine Rev. Stat. § 8712: The Maine Health Data Organization is required to create a publicly accessible website that details payment information to health care facilities and providers for health care services rendered to patients in Maine. The website must include payment information for health care services such as, imaging, preventative health, radiology, and surgical services. The website must display prices paid by health insurance companies, third party administrators, and if permitted, government payers (such as Medicaid and Medicare).
MD Code § 19-133: The Commission must publish an annual report on certain health care services selected by the Commission that describes the variation in fees charged by practitioners and facilities on a statewide basis for certain services and describes the geographic variation of utilization of those services.
MD Code § 19-207: The Commission may publish and give out information related to the financial aspects of health care that is part of the public interest.
M.G.L.A. 12C § 8: The Center for Health Information and Analysis must require acute and non-acute hospitals to file the charge book, cost data, audited financial statements, and merged billing and discharge data with the Center. The Center must publicly report on and put on its website information on health status adjusted total medical expenses, broken down by major service category and payment methodology, relative prices, and costs.
M.G.L.A. 12C § 16: The Center for Health Information and Analysis must publish an annual report based on the information submitted on health care provider, provider organization and private and public health care payer costs and cost trends. The Center must compare costs data with the health care cost growth benchmark established by the health policy commission.
M.S.A. § 62J.82: The Minnesota Hospital Association must develop a web-based system available to the public for reporting of charge information. The website must provide information that compares hospital-specific information to statewide hospital information.
M.S.A. § 62U.04: The Commissioner must publicly report the providers' total cost, total resource use, total quality, and the results of the total care portion of the peer grouping process and information on providers' condition-specific cost, condition-specific resource use, and condition-specific quality, and the results of the condition-specific portion of the peer grouping process annually. Before information is publicly disseminated, the Commissioner with the advisory committee must ensure the scientific and statistical reliability and validity of the results.
M.S.A. § 144.698: All financial reports filed by hospitals and outpatient surgical centers under this section are public information unless they contain privileged medical information.
M.S.A. § 144.699: The Commissioner of Health must encourage hospitals, outpatient surgical centers, home care providers, and other licensed health care providers to publish prices for services that are representative of those services sought by citizens of the state.
M.S.A. § 144.0506: The Commissioner of Health may post health care charges for common procedures on agency websites.
V.A.M.S. § 192.667: Under the statute, health care providers must report charge data to the Department at least annually, while hospitals must report patient abstract data and financial data annually. The information collected by the Department shall not be made public. However, reports and studies prepared by the Department based on this information may be public and may also identify individual health care providers. The statute requires the Department to undertake a “reasonable number” of studies and publish information based on this data, including at least an annual consumer guide.
N.R.S. § 439A-270: The Department of Health and Human Services must establish and maintain a website that contains information on the charges for services and quality of care provided by hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers. The website must include the total number of patients discharged, average length of stay, and average billed charges reported for the diagnosis-related groups for inpatients and the 50 medical treatments the Department finds to be the most useful for each hospital. The website must also include the total number of discharged patients and average billed charges, reported for the 50 most useful medical treatments for outpatients for each ambulatory surgery center.
N.C.G.S.A. § 131E-214.4: A statewide data processor must make available annually a report that includes the 35 most frequently reported charges of hospital and freestanding ambulatory surgical centers to the Division of Health Service Regulation of the Department of Health and Human Services. The report is a public report to be made available to the public.
NDCC § 23-.01.1-.02.1: The health care data committee must create a data collection, processing, retention and reporting system that will allow the distribution of comparative average charge information by licensed physicians. Insurers, nonprofit health service corporations, health maintenance organizations, and state agencies must provide this information. The health care data committee must prepare a report that includes a schedule of average charges for services representative of the physician’s practice and specialization.
Ohio Rev. Code § 3727.39: The director of health must make performance and price information submitted by hospitals publicly available on an internet website.
O.R.S. § 442.405: The Oregon Legislature has made it a statewide policy to require health care facilities to file public disclosure reports that allow private and public purchasers of health care services to make informed decisions in purchasing services.
35 Pa. Stat. Ann. § 449.7: The health care cost containment council will utilize data submitted by providers and other records and information available to it to prepare reports for the General Assembly and the public.
SDCL § 34-12E-11.1: The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations must develop a website, publicly available at no cost, for the reporting of hospital charge information. The charge information must include disclaimers on case severity ratings and individual patient variations that may affect patient charges. The website must provide information comparing hospital-specific data to hospital statewide data.
T.C.A. § 68-1-108: Hospital claims data reported to the Commissioner under this law must remain confidential and not be made publicly available until the data is verified by the Commissioner.
T.C.A. § 68-1-119: The commissioner may not make ambulatory surgical treatment center and outpatient claims data available to the public that could identify a patient; the claims data reported to the commissioner must remain confidential and not be made publicly available until the data is processed and verified by the Commissioner.
V.T.C.A. Health and Safety Code § 324.051: The Department of Health must make available on its website a consumer guide to health care. The guide must include information on facility pricing practices and the correlation between a facility's average charge for an inpatient admission or outpatient surgical procedure and the actual, billed charge for the admission or procedure.
U.C.A. § 26-33a-106.5: The health care data committee may publish reports that compare and identify providers or data suppliers from the data that has been collected. The committee must publish a report from the data collected that compares and identifies by name at least a majority of the health care facilities and institutions within the state. The report must be published annually, and must contain comparisons on nationally recognized quality standards, charges, and nationally recognized patient safety standards.
18 V.S.A. § 9405b: Each January, each hospital’s governing body must publish a community report on its website, making paper copies available as needed. The community report must be in a uniform format, as prescribed by law. Hospitals outside of the state that serve a significant number of Vermont residents must be invited to participate in the community report process as well. The community reports must also be provided to the Commissioner, who must make the reports available on a public website and include a format for comparing hospitals within the same categories of quality and financial indicators.
18 V.S.A. § 9410: The unified health database program must also include a consumer health care price and quality information system to provide consumers with transparent information to make informed decisions. The Commissioner may require a health plan covering 5% of covered lives to file a consumer health care price and quality information plan with the Commissioner.
VA Code Ann. § 32.1-276.5:1: In order to promote transparency of health care information for consumers to make informed decisions, the Insurance Commissioner must negotiate and contract with a nonprofit entity for annual survey of health insurance carriers. The survey must be managed by the Commissioner to ensure that aggregate information is being provided so that consumers can determine the average reimbursement rates for a particular service. Provider, facility, or carrier specific information will not be included in the public survey. The public survey report must be made publicly available though a website operated by the nonprofit entity. The Commissioner and other stakeholders must work to incorporate existing quality data and guidance into the price information. Over time, the Commissioner must take steps to display price and quality information for episodes of care consistent with national standards.
W. Va. Code § 16-5F-4: All covered facilities and related organizations must also file with the Board, a complete schedule of the covered facility’s then current rates with costs allocated to each category of costs, a copy of reports made or filed with the federal health care financing administration, and a statement of charges and salaries for all goods and services rendered to the covered facility for the reported time period that exceeds $55,000 and a statement of charges and fees collected by the covered facility that exceeds $55,000. All such reports must be available for public inspection.
W. Va. Code § 16-29B-25: The Board of Directors of the West Virginia Health Care Authority may carry out analyses of health care costs or the financial status of any health care provider, and may disseminate the information to the public in order to allow for informed decision making.
W.S.A. § 153.05: The Department of Administration must collect health care information from health care providers (excluding hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers), analyze it, and disseminate it in a language understandable by an average individual. The Department must contract with another entity to perform the collection duties of this section. This data organization must analyze and publicly report health care claims information regarding cost, quality, and effectiveness of the care in an easily understandable language. This information must be put in a central repository. Insurers may also provide health care information to the data organization, if requested by the Department.
W.S.A. § 146.903: Hospitals must prominently display, in the practice area, a notice informing the patient of their right to receive charge information and comparative quality information required to be reported.
W.S.A. § 153.45: The Department of Health Services must release health care data that has been verified, reviewed, and commented upon in standard reports and public use data files. Public use data files may include information on charges assessed with respect to the procedure code.

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 § 36
 § 20
 § 1339
 § 10
 § 25
 § 10
 § 2006
 § 2003
 § 2004
 § 408
 § 16
 § 216
 § 40
 § 8712
 § 19
 § 19
 § 8
 § 16
 § 62
 § 62
 § 144
 § 144
 § 144
 § 192
 § 439
 § 131
 § 23
 § 3727
 § 442
 § 449
 § 34
 § 68
 § 68
 § 324
 § 26
 § 9405
 § 9410
 § 32
 § 16
 § 16
 § 153
 § 146
 § 153