• California: According to a new report from Turquoise Health, over 90% of hospitals were compliant with price transparency regulations in 2023 — a significant increase from previous years. For the report, Turquoise analyzed data from 6,357 U.S. hospitals and found that 90.7% had posted a machine-readable file (MRF) with negotiated charges and cash prices on their website. In addition, 83.1% of hospitals also published "a substantial amount" of their negotiated rates. In comparison, a June 2022 study published in JAMA found that fewer than 6% of U.S. hospitals were fully compliant with CMS' price transparency requirements. Hospitals also improved the quality of MRFs, with Turquoise awarding more than half of hospitals with a five-star rating. To earn a five-star rating, hospitals must post an MRF that includes negotiated, cash, and list prices for a significant number of services and items. (Adams, MedCity News, 1/4; Henderson, MedPage Today, 1/4)
• Georgia: In a new report, CDC called for better screening of bone allograft donors after five surgery patients developed tuberculosis (TB) from a deceased donor last year. Of these five patients, two died. Overall, 36 patients in seven states received bone allografts from a deceased donor who had been infected with TB. After clinicians alerted CDC to cases of TB in patients who had undergone spinal surgical procedures that used bone allografts, the manufacturer issued a voluntary recall of the product on July 13, 2023. This is the second outbreak of TB from bone allografts in the past few years. In 2021, 113 patients in 18 states received contaminated bone allografts from the same manufacturer as the current outbreak. "This second outbreak of bone allograft-related TB in recent years underscores the urgent need to implement improved donor screening and culture-based testing to prevent tissue-derived Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission," the authors of the CDC report wrote. (AHA News, 1/4; Kahn, MedPage Today, 1/4)
• Rhode Island: CVS on Wednesday announced that it will remove AbbVie's rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira from some of its lists of preferred drugs for reimbursement beginning April 1. The company will also begin recommending biosimilars of the medicine instead, such as Hyrimoz and an unbranded version of Humira. "By preferring biosimilars that have a significantly lower list price than their reference product, CVS Caremark is putting our customers in the driver's seat to best meet the healthcare needs of their members and lower drug costs," said David Joyner, president of CVS' Caremark pharmacy benefit division. CVS also announced that AbbVie and Cordavis, a CVS-owned company, will produce a co-branded version of Humira that will be available for sale in the second quarter of the year. Although most biosimilars are close copies of branded drugs, CVS said the Cordavis version of Humira will be identical to the original formulation. (Wingrove, Reuters, 1/3)

A panel of Advisory Board experts sat down to discuss the confluence of three major price transparency policies: hospital price transparency, payer price transparency,  surprise billing, and their potential impact. In this post, Advisory Board's Heather Bell rounds up five takeaways from that discussion.