Joint Committee on Health Care Financing
The Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association (MHA), on behalf of our member hospitals, health systems, physician organizations and allied health care providers, appreciates the opportunity to submit comments in support of
HB622 / SB641, “An Act Eliminating Racial & Ethnic Health Disparities in the Commonwealth”.
MHA strongly supports
HB622 / SB641. This bill would formally establish in statute an Office of Health Equity within the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. Massachusetts hospitals are committed to providing high-quality timely access to patient care by developing innovative strategies to enhance quality, reduce cost, and increase efficiency for the care of each and every patient that walks through our doors. With the development of integrated care delivery models, our hospitals are also working across the continuum of care to ensure that patients are able to access a full spectrum of services in their communities that take into account cultural, language, and sexual orientation/gender related issues.
As a commonwealth, our collective efforts to expand access to care have been essential to addressing challenges faced by racial and ethnic populations, yet the problem hasn’t been solved. Because of this, Massachusetts hospitals have prioritized efforts on this front. Hospitals have long collaborated with the Department of Public Health, local boards of health (such as the Boston Public Health Commission), the Office of Medicaid, and the Attorney General’s office to ensure that community-based programs are targeting disadvantaged populations. And, for over 10 years, hospitals have worked with the state to improve on our quarterly case-mix/discharge database that provides detailed patient data on language, race, and ethnicity for the purposes of developing internal quality initiatives to reduce racial disparities.
In November 2015, the MHA Board of Trustees endorsed the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Equity of Care Campaign – called the “#123forEquity Pledge to Eliminate Health Care Disparities.” This campaign focuses on increasing three equity aims: 1) the collection and use of race, ethnicity and language preference data; 2) increasing cultural competency training; and 3) increasing diversity in governance and leadership. As healthcare providers shift towards integrated care and value-based payment, their ability to identify, measure, and reduce variations will be critical to the health and longevity of our organizations.
40 Massachusetts hospitals and health systems have signed the #123forEquity Pledge to Eliminate Health Care Disparities. By taking the pledge, hospital leaders publicly commit to: 1) take action to achieve the three equity aims; 2) provide updates on progress to the AHA and their Boards; and 3) share their success in promoting diversity and health equity with the public.
Despite these many efforts, much more work remains to be done. In particular, there is an important need for single state entity to coordinate the collection and dissemination of information in a manner that advances efforts focused on specific populations and clinical areas. For this reason, we support
HB622/SB641 as it will create a dedicated office within EOHHS to coordinate all statewide activities aimed at eliminating racial and ethnic health and health care disparities and accelerate the development of public policy.
Thank you for the opportunity to offer comments on this important matter. If you have any questions or require further information, please contact MHA's Vice President of Government Advocacy, Michael Sroczynski, at (781) 262-6055 or
msroczynski@mhalink.org.