The acute-care hospital Producer Price Index dropped 0.6% in April, preliminary data show. The decline is the largest one-month slide for the hospital inflation measure since January 2004, the first month for which data are available.
The index, which is tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, captured almost no change to hospital prices in March, when the preliminary figures found a 0.1% increase. The Producer Price Index includes changes to reimbursement rates paid to hospitals.
A year ago, the PPI for acute-care hospitals increased 0.1% in March and 0.2% in April.
For the year that ended last month, the hospital price index increased 1.8%, compared with 2.5% the prior 12 months.
The index for physician offices continued to decline, sliding 0.2% in April after the prior month's 0.7% drop. That's compared with the prior year, when the physician office PPI increased 0.1% in March and held steady in April.
The year that ended last month saw no change to physician office prices, the slowest rate of growth for any 12-month period since the year that ended in December 2002. The physician office PPI increased 1.4% for the year that ended in April 2012.
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