In 2022, the fourth in a series of National Hospital Price Transparency Studies conducted by the RAND Corporation offered an unprecedented look into hospital prices relative to Medicare in 49 states and the District of Columbia. The data proved what many of us already suspected: the prices we pay for health care vary tremendously and are uncorrelated to the value we receive.
To ensure that employers and other health care purchasers deploy RAND 4.0 to their advantage, the Employers’ Forum of Indiana unveiled Sage Transparency, a brand new tool that brings together public and proprietary data on hospital pricing and quality. Users have access to price and quality data for thousands of hospitals across the U.S.—and it’s free!
Knowing these hospital prices and quality is a great beginning – but it’s a first step. The Employer Hospital Price Transparency Project further helps employers and other health care purchasers use hospital pricing data to pursue higher-value healthcare. This entails:
- Understanding how hospital prices are negotiated and why prices differ drastically among hospitals and across markets
- Accessing relevant hospital pricing data and supplementing it with quality data using tools such as Sage Transparency to create a comprehensive picture of health care value
- Choosing from a menu of tactics and strategies to do any/all of the following:
- Guide plan members to the highest value care, through benefit or network design
- Contract directly with selected providers to create customized product design
- Partner with other purchasers or stakeholders to amplify purchasing power and advocate policy changes that can enhance transparency and re-balance the market
About The Employers’ Forum of Indiana
The Employers’ Forum of Indiana is a 501(c)(3) employer-led health care coalition of employers, physicians, hospitals, health plans, public health officials and other interested parties. Our goal is to improve the value payers and patients receive for their health care expenditures. The Forum is led by Gloria Sachdev.
