Rivet Hospital customers can now have a patient-facing, self-serve estimate tool available on their public website. Rivet built this feature to ensure compliance with the 2021 Hospital Price Transparency ruling which required hospitals to display self-pay and contracted rates for at least 300 shoppable services, 70 of which are predetermined by CMS.
1. Understanding the Feature
Once a hospital customer configures their account to enable this feature, a unique URL is generated. This URL can be posted on the hospital's website, leading patients and prospective customers to the self-serve estimator tool. Users can browse or search the hospital's selected shoppable services to assess the cost of care. If insurance information is entered, a real-time eligibility check will run to determine benefits and estimated patient responsibility.
2. What Shoppable Services Get Displayed?
To simplify onboarding, Rivet scans your Charge Description Master (CDM) for 440 commonly shoppable services, which include the 70 CMS-mandated services. If your CDM has these services, they will be marked as “shoppable” and will appear in the self-serve estimator tool. Services not found in the CDM will be excluded, with the exception of the 70 CMS-mandated services. If you don’t offer a CMS-required service, an indicator will show that it's not available at the hospital location. See the below screenshot.
If you do not want one of the Rivet pre-determined services to be displayed in the self-serve estimate tool, simply go to your CDM and deselect the service from the shoppable column.
3. Configuring Your Account for Self-Serve Estimates
To enable and configure the self-serve estimates tool, the following are required:
CDM uploaded in Rivet
Hospital brand created
Payer and self-pay contracts/fee schedules loaded
4. Steps to Configure Your Account
Go to Account Settings
Estimates
Self-Serve Estimator
Select a Brand: The logo and locations associated with this brand will be displayed.
Toggle on 'Enable Self-Serve Estimates for this Brand'
Enter an Account Slug: This is the last part of the URL that serves as a unique identifier for the page.
Confirm URL Availability: Click the 'Visit' button to check if the URL is available.
Claim URL: Click the 'Save' button.
Specify Locations: Choose the locations you want to be accessible.
Enter a Contact Phone Number: This will appear in the generic disclaimer as a contact point.
Select a Disclaimer: Choose between a generic disclaimer or create your own.
Shoppable Services: Click 'View Common Services' to see the shoppable services that will be displayed. To change them, click on 'See CDMs' and select/deselect services from the shoppable column. Note: CMS-required services cannot be deselected.
5. Machine Readable File Requirements
Hospital customers can generate a machine-readable file (MRF) off of their Charge Description Master which they can then post to their public-facing website. This is a requirement from the Hospital Price Transparency Act which was drafted to help Americans know the cost of a hospital item or service before receiving it. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented new requirements on 1/1/2024 for machine-readable files.
All US hospitals are required to make accessible online the following info to the general public:
A comprehensive machine-readable file with all items and services.
Display of 300 shoppable services either as MRF or online estimator.
MRF file conforms to CMS template layout and data dictionary
Data elements included in MRF file
General hospital data elements
Hospital name | last updated | address | license # | state licensed in | template version | attestation statement
Standard charges, item/services, and code data elements
Gross
Discounted cash
Negotiated payer charge per payer
Dollar | Percentage | Algorithm | or Estimated Amount
De-identified minimum
De-identified maximum
Standard charge methodology
Description, Setting, Code, and Code type
Date created
Code
Short description
Charge price
Min/max negotiated rate
Negotiated rate for all plans
Exception: Rivet does not provide this functionality to the customer. Provide .txt file in the root folder that includes the hospital location name, source page URL that hosts MRF, direct link to MRF, and hospital POC.
6. Creating a Machine Readable File
Go to the Estimate settings page in account settings.
Click on the machine-readable file tab.
Click on create file.
select a location Rivet will generate a name that meets the standard requirements.
Rivet pulls in this information from the selected location. Click submit to generate the machine-readable file.
Once the file has finished processing you will have a button to download the machine-readable file.
If you have any additional questions about setting up the Self-Serve Estimate feature, feel free to chat in or send an email to support@rivethealth.com.
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