On January 1, 2021 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rolled out the Hospital Price Transparency (HPT) initiative which requires all hospitals operating within the United States to provide "clear, accessible pricing information online" of all services and items they provide.

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The Hospital Price Transparency Management System (HPT-MS) solution enables cost transparency for medical services and products for the American public. Softrams worked with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services users to deliver this solution to help them investigate and review hospital compliance cases.

Streamlining HPT Compliance Case Investigation

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Prior to the development of the HPT solution, HPT compliance cases were handled manually by CMS in the form of many documents and applications, including email correspondences, Excel spreadsheets, SharePoint folders, Jira tickets, and in-person exchanges. Handling all documentation manually in disparate locations meant that case processing was slow, and information was duplicative. Additionally, our team needed to consolidate these documents and processes into a single system while they were being used daily by CMS users to investigate and analyze compliance complaints. To ensure that migration to the HPT system would go smoothly and cause as little disruption as possible for users, our team would need to keep the system as up to date as possible to keep pace with the CMS users’ work.

A Reliable System Built with Consistent Stakeholder Engagement

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Softrams employed a shift left approach when developing HPT-MS to fully understand stakeholders’ needs. Using multiple user experience patterns and complex questionnaires, we were able to construct a model that addresses several areas of concern with the original manual workflow process by creating a flexible, user-friendly application capable of managing a variety of options and nuances. 

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Employing an efficient, flexible technology stack, front-ended by a user interface built with ReactJS, we took the complex, manual compliance case investigation process and created a virtual environment to handle all tasks. The application is designed to not only manage everyday workflows but also generate important documentation used to support press releases, Inspector General reports, congressional briefings, and other transformative, law-making records. 

A Centralized Application for Investigating and Documenting Compliance Cases

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HPT-MS provides users with a user-friendly application to help them more quickly and effectively investigate hospital price transparency cases and take appropriate action.