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Home / Understand Price Variation

Understand Price Variation

Understand the root causes of hospital price variation

Health care in the commercial market is an industry without set prices—where the cost of goods and services are determined by negotiations between providers and intermediaries like health insurance companies and, much more rarely, employers or other healthcare purchasers. Because of the relative negotiating strength of different health plans or purchasers across healthcare markets, we end up paying wildly different amounts for the same services.

Dive into these resources for a closer look at how prices are set, why price transparency matters, and how the RAND Hospital Price Transparency Studies and Sage Transparency are providing information that could shake up the health care marketplace.

What causes hospital price variation?

June 27, 2020

The ripple effect of provider consolidation and price increases

Catalyst for Payment Reform

Marty Gaynor, economics professor at Carnegie Mellon and former Director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission, discusses the underlying dynamics of the health care marketplace.

Listen to the podcast

February 13, 2018

Cost of Care Study

Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement

The Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) explains the relationship between price, utilization and total cost of care, and demonstrates how these factors create health care cost variation across the country.

Read the study

November 30, 2018

Healthcare Cost Drivers: High and Rising Unit Prices

Altarum Healthcare Value Hub

The Healthcare Value Hub’s report on Health Care Cost Drivers explains the connection between health care price, utilization and spend, demonstrating that the increases in health care unit prices are responsible for driving up spend, despite declines in utilization.

Read the article

March 5, 2019

What it Takes to Move to Value-Based Hospital Payment Models in the Commercial Market

National Hospital Price Transparency Conference

Presentation and panel discussion moderated by Bob Smith of the Colorado Business Group on Health at the National Hospital Price Transparency Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Watch the presentation

Why is the Hospital Price Transparency Project so important?

September 18, 2020

RAND 3.0 Study Findings

RAND Corporation

Christopher Whaley, lead architect of the RAND 3.0 Hospital Price Transparency Study discusses key findings from the third iteration of the study. (From the 2nd Annual National Hospital Price Transparency Conference).

Download the slides

Watch the presentation

October 10, 2019

The National Employer-Led Hospital Price Transparency Study: Results from Rounds 1.0 and 2.0 and Gearing up for Round 3.0

Employers’ Forum of Indiana

Chapin White, lead architect of the RAND 1.0 and RAND 2.0 Hospital Price Transparency Study, explains why price transparency is central to better value health care, and discusses key findings from the first two iterations of the study (RAND 1.0 and 2.0).

Watch the presentation

May 31, 2019

Gloria Sachdev on Hospital-level Price Transparency

Catalyst for Payment Reform

Listen to Gloria Sachedev, PharmD, President and CEO of the Employers’ Forum of Indiana, discuss how the Hospital Price Transparency Study was born, how the data was produced, and what employers are doing with the results.

Listen to the podcast

May 9, 2019

Private Health Plans Pay Hospitals 241% of What Medicare Would Pay, RAND Study Finds

RAND Corporation

Press release from RAND 2.0 Hospital Price Transparency Study which included 1,598 hospitals in 25 states.

Download the document

In the News

Read the latest news and announcements on the Price Transparency, the RAND studies, and Employers’ Forum of Indiana.

Ascension shuts down doctor offices, invests in profitable hospitals

March 6, 2023

IndyStar

It’s Time For Employers To Bring Health Care Decisions In-House

September 22, 2022

Health Affairs

Employers Paying Hospitals More Than Double Medicare Prices

May 17, 2022

Bloomberg Law

Employers pay hospitals billions more than Medicare

May 17, 2022

Axios

Read more articles

RAND 5.0

Employers, health plans, business coalitions, all-payer-claim-databases, and other organizations that have employer hospital claims databases are invited to enroll in RAND 5.0, the fifth in a series of Hospital Price Transparency Studies.​

Enroll

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The Employer Hospital Price Transparency Project is an initiative of the Employers' Forum of Indiana.
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