2 Ohio hospitals warned for price transparency violations. Here’s what patients should know
Two Ohio hospitals were exposed by the federal price transparency initiative and if you’re facing a scheduled procedure, here’s what you should know about cost before you go in.
Under President Donald Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) have escalated enforcement of hospital price transparency rules.
The agency issued 519 enforcement actions to hospitals nationwide since April, including 16 in Georgia.
The Hospital Price Transparency rule
This rule requires all U.S. hospitals to post their standard charges online.
Hospitals must provide a comprehensive, machine-readable file of all items and services and a consumer-friendly display of at least 300 “shoppable services.”
Hospitals have been required to post pricing information since 2021, but CMS tightened the technical requirements for 2026.
Requirements
- A single machine-readable file listing standard charges for every item and service, in CMS-approved CSV or JSON formats. PDFs, Excel and XML no longer qualify
- A consumer-friendly display or price-estimator tool covering at least 70 CMS-specified “shoppable” services
- New formatting requirements took effect April 1, 2026, which is why some previously compliant hospitals are showing up on this year’s list
Ohio’s citations
These rules are meant to warn patients what their services and procedures will cost before they commit to treatment, and 2 hospitals in Ohio received warnings.
The CMS list doesn’t specify each hospital’s exact violation, only that an action was taken.
- Kings Daughter Medical Center, Portsmouth
- Ohio State University Hospital, Columbus
How patients can use price transparency
- Look up the hospital’s price transparency page before a scheduled surgery, imaging test, or other non-emergency procedure
- Try the shoppable-services list or estimator tool for your specific procedure code
- If a hospital’s page is missing, broken, or clearly incomplete, you can file a complaint directly with CMS
- Compare cash price vs. your insurer’s negotiated rate. They’re often very different numbers
If you have questions or if there is something you would like to read more about, email me at srose@ledger-enquirer.com or find me on social media.