The University of New Mexico Hospital publishes a complete catalog of its services, a list of all possible biopsies and blood tests, therapies and treatments.
In spreadsheet form, the list stretches on for more than 58,000 rows.
And each of those services comes with a cost, specific to each patient’s insurance carrier and calculated down to the centimeter of skin, to the minute of treatment, to the fingernail — literally. The standard charge, before insurance or self-pay discounts, to remove five or fewer fingernails or toenails is $72, compared to $80.25 for six or more nails. A complete nail trim, on fingers or toes, costs $111.
Federal rules require that level of specificity. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services since 2021 has required all hospitals operating in the U.S. to provide “clear, accessible pricing information” online to make it easier for consumers to “shop and compare prices,” the federal agency’s website states.
But some New Mexico hospitals still aren’t complying with those price transparency requirements, according to a report published this month by PatientRightsAdvocate.Org, a nationwide nonprofit healthcare price transparency group. The organization reviewed price transparency data for 11 major New Mexico hospitals — and 2,000 hospitals across the U.S. — to find 82% compliance with the federal regulations in the state, higher than the nationwide compliance rate of about 49%.
The report flagged Los Alamos Medical Center and Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces — both operated by nationwide chain Lifepoint Health — as two noncompliant hospitals, though a hospital spokesperson noted they’ve since updated their data to “ensure compliance.”
None of the 11 New Mexico hospitals met PatientRightsAdvocate.Org’s standards for pricing data sufficiency, meaning they didn’t provide adequate “dollars and cents pricing” information in their machine-readable files, said Ilaria Wheeler, the organization’s director of research.
“We now have a right to know prices up front in healthcare, so patients need to start demanding it,” she said in an interview.
The report comes as federal officials crack down on hospitals failing to comply with price transparency requirements. The Associated Press in June published a list of the more than 500 hospitals — including Mesilla Valley Hospital in Las Cruces, the Heart Hospital of New Mexico at Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque and Guadalupe County Hospital in Santa Rosa, N.M. — issued warnings for noncompliance from the federal government.
Los Alamos Medical Center and Memorial Medical Center have undertaken a “thorough review” of its pricing transparency resources and “made updates” in the months since PatientRightsAdvocate.Org collected its data, Andrew Cummins, a spokesperson for both hospitals, wrote in an email to The New Mexican.
“Memorial Medical Center and Los Alamos Medical Center support price transparency and believe patients should have access to information that helps inform their healthcare decisions,” he wrote. “We remain committed to providing clear, accessible pricing information and meeting all federal transparency requirements.”
Estimating costs
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ price transparency rules require all hospitals display their prices in two formats: in a consumer-friendly display and as a machine-readable file.
The consumer-friendly display allows would-be patients to plug in their insurance information and receive a cost estimate for at least 300 common procedures.
These online tools often issue a disclaimer that users’ bills might not match its estimates. Before using Presbyterian Healthcare Services’ cost estimator, for example, customers must acknowledge it provides “only an estimate” and that they may be billed for additional procedures performed.
“Our online calculator estimates what patients may pay for commonly scheduled hospital services based on their planned care and available insurance information. … We encourage patients to confirm benefits with their insurer or contact our financial advocates for help understanding costs, payment options and available financial assistance,” Kourtney Muñoz, a spokesperson for Presbyterian Healthcare Services, wrote in an email.
The machine-readable files, however, offer a much more comprehensive look at expected hospital costs — albeit in a format that would be hard to parse for most consumers. The machine-readable file now posted on Memorial Medical Center’s website, for instance, includes more than 113,000 rows of data, once converted into a spreadsheet. The one for Presbyterian Española Hospital has more than 204,000 rows. The machine-readable file for Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center is written in a programming language, making it even tougher to decipher.
The Trump administration has warned more than 500 hospitals that they are failing to provide the public with basic pricing information — arguing that the lack of disclosure is keeping healthcare costs higher than they should be.
But adhering to those requirements can be “challenging” for hospitals, Troy Clark, president of the New Mexico Hospital Association, wrote in an email to The New Mexican. Collecting all of that information, updating it annually and maintaining it in the required format eats up a lot of technological, financial and administrative resources.
It’s particularly difficult for smaller hospitals — like many of the hospitals that serve rural New Mexico communities — with limited staff and funding, Clark added.
“All hospitals recognize the importance of helping patients understand and navigate the financial aspects of their care,” he wrote. “They work to provide information and assistance to patients to best inform them based on their individual circumstances, such as insurance coverage and expected services.”
New Mexico hospitals
The PatientRightsAdvocate.Org report found New Mexico hospitals are making progress toward adhering to federal price transparency requirements — but there’s still plenty of work to do, Wheeler said.
As part of this year’s report, the organization examined data from:
- Carlsbad Medical Center
- Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe
- Covenant Health Hobbs Hospital
- Eastern New Mexico Medical Center in Roswell
- Los Alamos Medical Center
- Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque
- Lovelace Women’s Hospital in Albuquerque
- Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces
- Mountain View Regional Medical Center in Las Cruces
- Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque
- University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque
Margaret O’Hara reports on issues affecting healthy communities in New Mexico. Her work is funded by a grant from Anchorum Health Foundation. Anchorum will not have any role in editorial decisions. The New Mexican and its Public Service Journalism Fund retain full editorial control. Philanthropically funded stories by The New Mexican are made available to all readers without a paywall.
