The Trump Administration warned two San Antonio hospitals that they are failing to provide transparent pricing information for patients and insurers on their websites.
As part of a plan to make the cost of treatments and procedures known to patients and insurers ahead of time, the administration has sent out over 500 notices to hospitals since April that are out of compliance with the new requirements.
Baptist Medical Center and Kindred Hospital – San Antonio Central, both located at 111 Dallas St. in downtown San Antonio, were among the hospitals that received such warnings, according to a document obtained by the Associated Press.
According to the administration, the push is aimed at bringing down healthcare costs by letting patients know ahead of time how much treatments and various procedures will cost them.
Baptist Medical Center is a large general hospital, part of the Baptist Health System, which is owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare. Kindred Hospital – San Antonio Central is a long-term acute care hospital that operates at the same location. It’s owned by ScionHealth.
ScionHealth representatives did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Baptist Health System in San Antonio pointed to pricing data and financial planning information available on the hospital system’s website. Pricing information can also be found on Kindred Hospital’s website.
A warning doesn’t necessarily mean a hospital is hiding prices. The notices flag a range of compliance issues, including minor online formatting issues, not a complete lack of available data.
For example, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, also among the hospitals warned, told the Associated Press that its notice stemmed from “a minor formatting issue involving a date field” that has since been corrected.
The warning notices handed to the San Antonio hospitals were also not as severe as the “CAP requests” that others received, which require hospitals to submit formal plans to the federal government for increased pricing transparency.
Failure to comply with the notices and provide clear pricing data for patients and insurers could come with penalties as high as $2 million annually for hospitals. More hospitals will likely receive warning notices, according to the Associated Press.
Texas had the largest number of hospitals that received notices compared to other states.
