Hospital price transparency
Where the attestation must appear
The attestation is not a separate document, a paragraph on the compliance webpage, or a sentence in a press release. It is encoded in the machine-readable file itself. The CMS schema defines an attestation object with three parts: the statement text, a confirm_attestation value, and the attester_name - all carried inside the same file as the charges.
That placement has consequences. A correct statement anywhere else does not satisfy a requirement that lives in the file. The website footer link and the root .txt file that point a visitor to the MRF are separate requirements; neither substitutes for the attestation object inside the file they point to.
Placement also means the statement travels. Every download of the file carries the affirmation and the attester's name with it - to researchers, aggregators and CMS itself. An outdated name or a missing confirmation follows every copy wherever it goes.
When you review placement, check the file, not the page. Parse the MRF and confirm the attestation object is present, the confirmation value is true, and the name is current. A structural validator catches a missing element; only a read of the values catches a stale one.
Sources
Related guides
YieldGuard audits hospital machine-readable files against the current CMS requirements. Request Compliance Assessment