Montana Hospital Price Transparency Report
Last updated September 5, 2026 · 68 hospitals reviewed
23%
Publish usable prices
Grades A or B
33%
No usable file found
Grade F
D
Average grade
across 61 mandated hospitals
14
of 61
with usable prices we could parse
About the grades
CareRanks grades reflect the depth and usability of a hospital's Machine-Readable File under the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule:
- A — MRF published with negotiated rates or cash-pay prices on 25 or more distinct DRGs.
- B — MRF published with negotiated or cash prices on fewer than 25 DRGs.
- C — MRF published, but priced rows include only gross charges (no cash or negotiated rates).
- D — MRF exists in our archive, but no priced rows could be parsed.
- F — No MRF found, despite the federal mandate.
- One letter lower (A→B, B→C, C→D) — when the file we found does not identify this hospital by name and street address, naming its health system or another facility instead; the rule requires each hospital location to be identifiable. Combined system files that list the location are not penalized.
- N/A — Not mandated (VA, federal psychiatric, children's, long-term acute care).
Under the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule, every general acute care hospital in the United States is required to publish a machine-readable file (MRF) listing its standard charges for at least 300 shoppable services. The rule took effect in January 2021, but enforcement has been uneven. CareRanks checks each Montana hospital's MRF on a monthly cycle and assigns a letter grade reflecting what we could find and parse: whether a machine-readable file exists at the hospital's published location, and how much usable pricing it contains.
In Montana, 61 of the 68 facilities reviewed are subject to the rule (VA hospitals, federal psychiatric facilities, children's hospitals, and long-term acute care facilities are exempt or fall under separate transparency programs). Of those, 14 have published comprehensive pricing files that include negotiated rates or cash-pay prices on 25 or more distinct DRGs — earning a Grade A or B. For 20 hospitals we could not locate a usable machine-readable file, which earns a Grade F — that can mean no file is published, or that it is published somewhere our crawler could not find or read.
Use the table below to compare grades, see MRF status, and follow the source link to each hospital's published file. Click a column header to sort. If you spot an out-of-date MRF link or a hospital that should be re-graded, use the "Report an error" link at the bottom of any hospital profile.