The Employers’ Forum of Indiana is an employer-led health care coalition, founded in 2001, comprised of employers, physicians, hospitals, health plans, benefit consultants, and other interested parties. The Forum board and executive committee are only comprised of employers.
The Forum is committed to providing quality, price, and cost transparency across the healthcare ecosystem; collaborating with healthcare stakeholders to align payment with high value medical and pharmacy services; and supporting public health initiatives. We accomplish this by providing education, conducting research, and engaging in policy. We believe that by empowering employers and people with evidenced-based data, it permits them to make more informed purchasing decisions.
The Employers’ Forum of Indiana is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) public charity.
Summary of the Employers’ Forum for Download
Premise
Employers who work collaboratively with a unified voice can more effectively partner with providers, health plans, and other partners to address pressing healthcare issues.
- The Forum is a vehicle to provide collaborative opportunities as it is the largest employer-led multistakeholder coalition in Indiana.
- The intention of the Forum is to foster health care value improvement that is substantial and continuous.
Goal
To improve the value received by employers and patients for their health care expenditures. Value considerations include price, quality, employee satisfaction and utilization.
Membership Value
Forum members have the unique opportunity to work collaboratively across key stakeholders to:
- Identify and develop initiatives that support aligning payment with high value medical and pharmacy services
- Determine how best to fairly measure hospital, provider, and health plan performance
- Identify technologies, programs, and services that improve healthcare
- Network with colleagues
- Participate on Forum work groups when available
- Provide guidance on the future direction of Forum educational topics and initiatives
Logistics
The Forum hosts quarterly all-stakeholder meetings at which local and national speakers present/lead discussions on a variety of healthcare topics. A monthly newsletter is also made available.
- 2020 topics included direct-to-employer medication contracting, payment for oncology meds, substance use disorder certificate opportunity (which the Forum provided seed funding for), advanced care planning, delirium impact, surprise billing, anticompetitive provider contract language, national and state hospital price & quality transparency, state legislative policy engagement, and COVID-resource document.
- 2019 topics included employer-level population health for chronic conditions, bundled payments for episodes of care, national hospital price transparency, strategies to achieve high hospital value, employer engagement on quality, high prescription drug costs, and SUD employer toolkit: www.employeropioidtoolkit.org.
- A key initiative of the Forum is commissioning RAND Corp to conduct the first national hospital price transparency study in the country to publicly report relative prices at the hospital level. The first study in this series, RAND 1.0, which analyzes 120 hospitals in Indiana, was published in 2017; RAND 2.0 which analyzes 1600 hospitals in 25 states of which Indiana was the highest priced state, was published in May 2019; RAND 3.0, which includes 49 states plus D.C., was published in September 2020; and RAND 4.0 which will continue to increase the number of hospitals and amount of claims data under analysis will include pricing information on certain non-hospital outpatient services, will be released in early 2022. These landmark studies can be found on the Forum’s Price Transparency Project website: www.employerPTP.org.
- The Forum also hosts employer-only meetings and task groups to discuss various initiatives.
- Forum membership includes annual dues.
Annual Summaries of Activities
The Employers’ Forum of Indiana is supported by its members, Arnold Ventures, Gates Ventures, and West Health.
