Publications

This Legislatively mandated report examines 2023 public and commercial payment rates for common behavioral health services in Massachusetts, including differences by setting and provider, and presents policy recommendations to strengthen behavioral health workforce capacity.

This report analyzes data and trends in ED boarding from 2020-2024 in Massachusetts, highlights policies that aim to decrease BH ED boarding in the Commonwealth, and presents policy recommendations based on the data, other states’ experiences with ED boarding, and stakeholder conversations.

This HPC policy brief explores how the hospital at home model of care has been implemented in Massachusetts. Through this model, hospitals provide hospital-level services in a patient’s home, rather than in a traditional “brick and mortar” setting for patients who are clinically stable enough to receive this care at home.

Primary care in Massachusetts is facing challenges, including provider burnout and patient access barriers. Administrative burden makes the work of primary care unsustainable, and low payment rates disincentivize clinician entry and make practices hard to sustain. The HPC offers policy options to address these challenges.

The HPC's Health Equity Practice and Style Guide is a practical resource developed by and for HPC staff. Its purpose is to promote intentional and consistent use of language and terminology across all agency work products, to encourage reflection among staff as they communicate about equity within their workstreams, and to provide resources, tools (including preferred terms), and HPC-specific use cases. The Guide is a living document, updated by a staff committee and released annually.

This report describes the use of behavioral health managers, the regulatory landscape in Massachusetts and other states, and perspectives on the use of behavioral health managers. The report also reviews comparative health plan quality measures and concludes with recommendations.

This policy brief describes the business model of private equity, provides a literature review of private equity’s impact on health care, and presents a novel analysis of health care provider mergers and acquisitions in Massachusetts from 2013 to 2023. In addition, the brief summarizes potential policy approaches to enhance transparency and oversight to minimize the potential harms of private equity involvement in health care.

This report explores inequities in the rate of severe maternal morbidity among birthing people in Massachusetts and examines spending and affordability implications of adverse maternal outcomes by race and ethnicity.

Special policy report on the consolidation and closures across the Massachusetts pediatric health care market, and the implications that this has on the market and broadly on cost, quality, access, and equity.

Special report examining Massachusetts workforce impacts from COVID-19 and targeted policy considerations to address these challenges, with a special focus on registered nurses, direct care workers, and behavioral health providers.