Publications

CHIA is uniquely positioned to collect and share data that establishes the factual foundation for health policy development and performance measurement. DataMatters, CHIA's newsletter, shares our recent reporting highlights and puts our data into a broader context.

The May 2023 issue highlights the construction of our recent Hospital Profiles publication as well as new interactive dashboards featuring HIDD and EDD Case Mix data. 

CHIA's Emergency Department dashboard offers insights into emergency department (ED) utilization in Massachusetts. The dashboard encompasses:

• Statewide Utilization
• Utilization by Hospital
• Visit Characteristics
• Diagnoses
• Behavioral Health
• COVID-19

Massachusetts Hospital Profiles provide information on acute and non-acute hospitals based on hospital characteristics, financial performance, services, payer mix, utilization trends, and cost trends over a five-year period through HFY 2021. These newly designed profiles allow comparison against statewide, regional, or peer cohorts for each measure.

The profiles are accompanied by a dashboard for all acute hospitals, allowing users to filter results by individual hospital, hospital type, and hospital health system.

This new research brief explores the connection between health insurance coverage rates and immigration and citizenship status. Prior research indicates that citizenship and immigration status are associated with health outcomes and inequities. Correlations between immigration and citizenship status and rates of health insurance coverage may be one contributing factor to such health inequities.

As the foreign-born population in Massachusetts continues to increase, improved access to information on disparities in health insurance coverage rates by immigration and citizenship status may help reduce these gaps.

A new special online supplement to the Annual Report explores utilization trends and the continued strain on the Massachusetts health care system, the emergence of new COVID-19 treatments and testing, and the adoption of telehealth as an essential part of the delivery system. 

These data visualizations put some of the report’s key themes and findings into a more qualitative context.

This issue of DataMatters has an opening message from CHIA's new Executive Director Lauren Peters. Also highlighted, CHIA's new interactive Hospital and Health System Financial Dashboard.

The Data User Profile section dives into how CHIA produces mandated benefit reviews using the MA APCD, along with other data sources. CHIA regularly evaluates the efficacy and cost impact of health benefit mandate bills at the request of the Massachusetts Legislature.

CHIA, in collaboration with Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP), has published Massachusetts’ first-ever dashboard of metrics to monitor the health of the primary care system in the Commonwealth. The dashboard measures: 

• Finance
• Capacity
• Performance
• Equity

CHIA has published the latest report in its series providing analyses and trends sourced from the Massachusetts Acute Hospital Case Mix Database. The Massachusetts Acute Care Hospital Inpatient Discharge Data (FFY 2016-2021) report presents key measures of inpatient utilization overall and by hospital, patient, and discharge characteristics from FFY 2016 to FFY 2021.

This report establishes an important baseline of inpatient utilization that can be used for public health initiatives, analyses of preventable hospitalizations and readmissions, and comparative cost and outcomes research.

CHIA has published a new research brief on emergency department use, Black and Hispanic Residents Report Higher Likelihood of Potential Reliance on the Emergency Department for Health Care than White Residents in the Commonwealth.

Frequent utilization of the emergency departments (ED) for non-emergent conditions can strain health care systems, impacting both hospitals and patients. While Massachusetts has made significant progress to minimize barriers to accessing and affording care, substantial disparities persist among certain sub-populations.

This issue of DataMatters highlights the new research brief exploring the role of race/ethnicity in emergency department utilization.

This issue's Data User Profile explores the integration of three different databases, including CHIA's Case Mix data, into a single statewide ischemic stroke database in order to monitor stroke outcomes. The Publications and Data Releases and Upcoming Events sections focus on recently released reports  and events of interest to the local health data community. 

CHIA's report on behavioral health and readmissions found that there was a high prevalence of behavioral health comorbidities among hospitalized adults in Massachusetts acute care hospitals. Readmission rates for patients with behavioral health comorbidities were nearly twice the rates for patients without any behavioral health comorbidity.

This report also includes analysis of the prevalence, average length of stay, and readmission rates among patients with behavioral health comorbidities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.