Hospital price lists remain indecipherable

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) stipulated that starting January 1st of this year, hospitals had to post list prices online. Many hospitals have opted to fulfill the requirement by posting what's known as their chargemaster. Kaiser Health News reports that while the online postings fulfill the requirement from CMS, the lists are largely unintelligible to the average consumer.

To be fair, the chargemasters were primarily intended to serve billing departments and not patients. Translations of the many abbreviations take much effort, and understandably, hospitals are busy. Hopefully, some enterprising firms will undertake the job of making this information more user-friendly across hospitals.