Relentless Health Value

If you go to the Sage Transparency dashboard Web site, you get a really graphical representation of the prices that any given hospital actually needs to charge so that they break even. You can see precisely which hospitals are operating on thin margins and which ones are not. You might be thinking, “Okay, so ... what’s the big deal about this? Why is the Sage Transparency information so meaningful? Aren’t hospitals (most of them) providing their financial statements already?” Well, let’s discuss. First of all, we have the main hospital lobbying organization coming out with press releases such as this one saying (here’s some quotes): “Hospitals have incurred serious losses …” “The vast majority of America’s hospitals [are] in serious financial jeopardy …” Combine quotes like these (and there are many) with some of the funny stuff going on in some (not all) hospital financial reporting—like counting investment losses from their venture funds, not counting endowments or their big trusts in the math, paying C-sui