2019 Publications

The Massachusetts Hospital-Wide Adult All-Payer Readmissions SFY 2011-2018 report provides a statewide look at readmissions from Massachusetts acute care hospitals, enabling insights into statewide, regional, and hospital-specific readmission rates, including breakdowns by payer type, discharge setting, and hospital characteristics.

This report is also accompanied by a databook, a technical appendix, and an infographic. 

Nursing facilities serve an important role in the continuum of health care services in Massachusetts, providing over 14 million patient days of service in 2017; an average of over thirty-nine thousand individuals received care from nursing facilities on a daily basis. To better understand this component of the health care system, CHIA's initial report examines the Commonwealth's nursing facilities at an industry level, as well as by analytic cohorts, on measures of utilization, financial performance, and quality of care over a five-year period (2013–2017).

In addition to this report, CHIA has also developed an analytic dashboard that facilitates a profile view of each of the 393 nursing facilities in Massachusetts.

Until recently, hospital readmission reduction efforts have focused primarily on medical or surgical conditions, with less emphasis on patients' behavioral health conditions. Given the high hospital utilization and cost associated with comorbid behavioral health conditions, stakeholders share a growing awareness that patients with behavioral health comorbidities may have a higher than average risk of readmissions, thus any efforts to reduce readmissions should include identifying risk factors associated with these populations.

This report is also accompanied by a databook and technical appendix.

The 2019 Annual Report on the Performance of the Massachusetts Health Care System presents a final calculation of the Commonwealth's Total Health Care Expenditures for 2017 and an initial calculation for 2018, as well as additional key indicators used to assess the performance of the state's health care system in 2018. Supporting materials include databooks, a dataset, and technical appendices.

CHIA's Massachusetts Acute Hospital and Health System Financial Performance reporting measures uprofitability, liquidity, and solvency metrics as well as other pertinent financial data.

A five-year financial trend analyses. is available for each acute hospital in Massachusetts. The Hospital Health System (HHS) profiles provide a summary of financial performance and relative size of component entities for the hospital health system and their affiliated acute hospitals, physician organizations, and health plans.

Twice a year, CHIA updates its analysis of Massachusetts health insurance enrollment trends for the most recent trailing two-year period to give researchers and policymakers insight into the market. Approximately 6.5 million Massachusetts residents have health insurance coverage, where coverage is defined by unique Massachusetts residents with primary, medical membership in the 14 largest commercial payers, MassHealth (MassHealth), or Medicare.

This edition, which covers the period between March 2017 and March 2019, includes an interactive dashboard, a detailed databook, and technical appendix.

The Massachusetts Employer Survey (MES) provides a valuable lens on the employer health insurance market, including information on employer health insurance offerings, employee take-up rates, cost-sharing, plan characteristics, and employer decision making.

The 2018 MES has several key updates: inclusion of a panel sample to allow for longitudinal data analysis, additional questions regarding part-time workers' health insurance benefits, and improved comparability of its key measures to national benchmarks.

Providers, payers, and policymakers are increasingly turning their attention to whether the patient returns to an acute care setting at any level (ED, observation, or inpatient) soon after an inpatient discharge. The ED is a costly setting to receive care, and patients visiting the ED in the post-hospital discharge period may represent an opportunity to improve care.

This CHIA report examines emergency department (ED) visits after an inpatient discharge in Massachusetts acute care hospitals.

Relative Price (RP) facilitates comparison of average provider prices, accounting for differences in patient acuity, the types of services providers deliver to patients, and the different insurance product types that payers offer to their members.

CHIA's latest update of provider price variation in the Massachusetts commercial health insurance market includes an executive summary, customizable interactive graphics, a databook, and a technical appendix.

Massachusetts has had near universal health insurance coverage since implementing the state’s 2006 health care reform law with additional coverage gains attained under the Affordable Care Act in 2014. However, Massachusetts has historically had health care costs that exceed national averages, making affordability a challenge for many residents despite their insurance coverage.

This brief outlines the scope of health care affordability issues among Massachusetts residents and the rates of affordability issues for population subgroups.

Hospital-specific readmissions profiles gives key insights into the performance of each of the 58 acute care hospitals in Massachusetts.

Each profile highlights a hospital's readmission rate over time, as well as rates broken out by patient and discharge characteristics, including age, payer type, and discharge setting. Additionally, discharge diagnoses resulting in high numbers and rates of readmissions are identified, readmissions among frequent hospital users are profiled, and readmissions to other hospitals are quantified.