Law requires hospitals to share their prices. Most still don’t.

It’s been more than a year since a federal law went into effect requiring hospitals to post their prices online for all to see.

 The problem?

The majority of hospitals still aren’t complying, according to Patient Rights Advocate.

The non-profit group reviewed 2,000 hospitals of the more than 6,000 accredited hospitals in the U.S. for a third time since the Hospital Price Transparency Rulebecame law. It found that, while some hospitals are complying, it’s not many – just 16%.

The report says 101 hospitals did not post any data and are in total noncompliance with the law, and 407 hospitals did post prices. But their posts also reflected missing or incomplete data.

“Unfortunately, after nearly 20 months of the Hospital Price Transparency Rule being in effect, the compliance rate has stalled, with only marginal improvement to 16% compliance up from 14.3% in our previous report,” said Cynthia Fisher, Founder and Chairman of PatientsRightsAdvocate.org. “The quickest way to substantially improve compliance is through monetary fines which work, as our report shows.”

Patient Rights Advocate release its last report earlier this summer and, after Fisher was featured on NBC Nightly News, the Department of Health and Human Services fined two hospitals that didn’t comply with the pricing law. Now, those hospitals are fully compliant.

In June, The American Hospital Association said that some of the law’s requirements, like compiling machine-readable files of the rates, were difficult to implement.

Have you tried to check out the prices your local hospital charges? What did you find? Share your experience with Voices for Affordable Health.