The Employers’ Forum of Indiana coordinates initiatives to improve the value received by employers and patients for their health care expenditures.
Sage Transparency
Sage Transparency is a free, public-facing tool designed to offer a clear, unbiased view of hospital price, cost, and quality data, as well as price data for ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and physician-administered medications. Initially launched in May 2022 and then relaunched in May 2024 with new dashboards, data, and features, it aids employers, policymakers, researchers, and the general public in making informed, evidence-based decisions.
Employer Price Transparency Studies
A key initiative of the Forum is commissioning national employer price transparency studies in the country to publicly report relative prices at the hospital level. Studies 1-5 in this series were conducted by the RAND Corporation.
The first study in this series, RAND 1.0 published in 2017 analyzed 120 hospitals in Indiana. RAND 2.0 which analyzed 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. A fourth report was released in May of 2022 which included data from over 4,000 hospitals as well as ambulatory surgical centers. PT5 (RAND 5.0) was released in May 2024 and updated December 10, 2024 (PT5.1/RAND 5.1) and includes hospital and ambulatory surgical center data as well as medication prices. These landmark studies can be found on the Forum’s Employer Price Transparency website.
Healthcare Policy
The Forum has been an active participant in the drafting of many Indiana bills and committee hearing on a wide variety of healthcare topics. A yearly document is published for members as a summary of information of bills passed or introduced.
National Healthcare Price Transparency Conference
In 2019, the Forum began a series of conferences to go in depth on the Employer Price Transparency Studies. Employers and speakers from around the country met to hear the results of these studies and discuss solutions to improve the value and cost of healthcare.
The last conference took place on May 13, 2024 in Indianapolis, Indiana and featured the results of PT5 (RAND 5.0) and introduced Sage Transparency 2.0, our interactive healthcare price dashboard.
COVID-19 Resources
The COVID-19 pandemic has made evident the devastating effect of inherent racial biases within our healthcare system. Each of us is in a position to be part of the solution. We challenge you to consider what you will do, no matter how small of a step it may be, to address these issues.
We have created a coronavirus help section as part of our commitment to share information across stakeholders to assist employers and their workforces during these difficult times.