Hospitals cite technical issues for price transparency notices 

Many of the 519 hospitals that drew federal price transparency warning letters from the Trump administration said the citations stemmed from minor technical or formatting errors in their data files — not a failure to disclose pricing — and that the problems were corrected within days of notification.

The Associated Press exclusively received a list of hospitals that have either received warning letters or requests to submit plans to provide transparency pricing since April. A senior administration official who requested anonymity told the news outlet that President Donald Trump plans to ramp up price transparency enforcement and more hospitals are likely to receive letters for failure to comply.

Becker’s spoke with more than a dozen health systems with hospitals that were among the 519 that received notice letters. The systems said their issues were tied to technical or formatting issues rather than missing pricing data.

Among them was Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network, whose flagship academic medical center, Allegheny General Hospital, received a warning notice from CMS. An Allegheny Health Network spokesperson told Becker’s the hospital received the notice in April and the issue raised by the administration was “rectified immediately.”

“Importantly, the only issue raised by CMS was not a transparency issue, it was a small technical/clerical issue,” the spokesperson said. “We submitted a file that included our DBA name (Allegheny General Hospital) but did not include our legal entity name (West Penn Allegheny Health System).”

Allegheny Health Network received written confirmation in May that CMS was satisfied with the fix and the issue is now closed. 

Greenville, N.C.-based ECU Health received warning notices at two of its hospitals, its flagship ECU Health Medical Center and ECU Health Beaufort Hospital in Washington, N.C. 

An ECU Health spokesperson said that for its flagship hospital, CMS identified technical issues with the machine-readable file that affected compliance with certain formatting requirements, and the identified technical issues were corrected within the timeframe allowed by CMS.

The notice received by ECU Health Beaufort Hospital involved a separate issue related to its organizational structure. The hospital is a campus of ECU Health Medical Center. Pricing information was already publicly available as part of the flagship hospital’s file. 

“We have since taken additional steps to post a separate machine-readable file for the Beaufort campus to further facilitate patient access to pricing information specific to that location,” the ECU Health spokesperson said. 

Jeremy Farnum, director of information services at Lompoc (Calif) Valley Medical Center said CMS identified three encoding errors in the hospital’s machine-readable file. He said the issues did not involve missing pricing data or an unwillingness to disclose charges. There were formation issues in how the data was structured within the MRF.

“Upon receiving the notice, we worked with our MRF hosting vendor to identify and correct all three errors,” Mr. Farnum said. “We also prepared a corrective action plan to formalize the fixes and prevent recurrence. We support the goals of price transparency and have been committed to compliance since the rule took effect. The increased enforcement focus reinforces the importance of the technical precision required in MRF files, and we’ve tightened our internal review processes accordingly.”

New price transparency rules took effect for hospitals April 1 covering machine-readable files, with changes focused on attestation language and executive accountability for file accuracy, percentile allowed amount reporting, and National Provider Identifier reporting. Multiple health systems noted the new rules in their responses to Becker’s, including King of Prussia, Pa.-based Universal Health System, which had several facilities receive notices from CMS following the updated requirements. 

“The primary issue that has been raised was a technical one dealing with the manner in which our facilities were identified and not one related to the disclosure of pricing information,” a UHS spokesperson said. “All pricing information was provided. Upon notification, we reviewed the matter and facilities have implemented the necessary corrections. Most facilities have since received notice of resolution from CMS.” 

Federal price transparency laws have been in effect for hospitals since Jan. 1, 2021, and July 1, 2022, for payers. CMS has fined 28 hospitals for alleged price transparency violations since the law took effect in 2021. Ten hospitals were fined in 2025, and one hospital has been fined so far in 2026.

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