Sage Transparency makes hospital quality information easily and freely accessible.
Many of us know the stress that comes from surprise sky-high costs after receiving healthcare services. It can feel impossible to know how much providers will charge for outpatient, surgical or emergency care – or how good the care may be.
These questions are a bit easier to answer now thanks to the Employer’s Forum of Indiana. In 2022, they launched Sage Transparency, a revolutionary tool that highlights both public and proprietary information about quality and costs for healthcare systems throughout the country. Their goal is to grant individuals and employers access to as much information as possible in one place to understand who the highest quality hospital systems and providers are and what the cost is at each provider. This free, convenient tool pulls data for every health system around the United States, providing a wealth of information to individuals across the country.
Where does the data come from?
Sage Transparency undergoes regular updates from five different data sources to provide the most up-to-date information to users.
One of the private tools Sage employs is Turquoise Health, which collects pricing information from hospital websites and brings them in one place to allow for seamless comparison. Sage also utilizes Quantros, a tool from Healthcare Bluebook that uses Medicare data to determine which hospitals and physicians have the highest quality based on objective results and outcomes. Sage Transparency provides a customizable dashboard using information from these platforms, as well as the RAND National Hospital Price Transparency Study, the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
How is quality measured?
Using the Quantros Hospital Quality Reliability Scores, Sage Transparency allows users to see the quality of a hospital or system on a scale of 0-100, normalizing the data for the risk within each patient treated. Sage also highlights an overall hospital quality star rating from CMS, demonstrating a hospital’s caliber of care on a scale of 1-5.
How can I use Sage Transparency?
Sage Transparency is a groundbreaking tool that can provide invaluable information to individuals throughout the United States – and can be used in a variety of ways.
Hospital Directory
Sage allows users to look up information on a specific hospital using the Hospital Directory, highlighting information on both quality and price to show how a hospital compares with national and state averages.
Hospitals by System
For individuals who have a large hospital system near them, the Hospitals by System tool can help show where specific care centers rank among other hospitals in the same network.
Hospitals by State
Sage Transparency’s Hospital by State tab allows users to see price and quality information for all hospitals in the state of their choice, selecting the regions, systems and ratings of most interest to them.
Clinical Categories
Whether users need information on cardiovascular care, orthopedics or MRIs and imaging, Sage has broken up data by clinical category, allowing individuals to tailor information depending on their care needs.
Sage Transparency is a remarkable tool with incredible capabilities to empower individuals to make better decisions on their healthcare providers. For more information on Sage, check out our recent video where TCHP founder Mike Hill walks through the tool and shares additional insights:
