Quality of Care in the Commonwealth

CHIA monitors and reports on health care quality using measures selected from the Commonwealth's Aligned Measure Set and Standard Quality Measure Set (SQMS), as well as other measures of interest. The metrics cross different domains of quality assessment, including:

• Clinical Quality Measures
• Hospital patient experience
• Primary care patient experience
• Maternity-related care
• Hospital adherence to safe practices
• Health care-associated infections
• Mortality
• Medication safety
• Effective care processes

CHIA calculates quality performance on all-payer adult acute hospital readmissions by applying a standard methodology to the Massachusetts Hospital Inpatient Discharge Database. This measure is reported in CHIA's Annual Report on the Performance of the Massachusetts Health Care System. CHIA also displays quality information in a series of interactive online graphics found on this webpage.

For more information about the Commonwealth’s Aligned Measure Set, please visit the EOHHS Quality Measure Alignment Taskforce webpage.

Key Quality of Care in the Commonwealth Findings from CHIA's Annual Report (March 2022)

• On selected clinical quality metrics, statewide scores were higher in 2020 than in 2018 for measures in the Behavioral Health domain, and lower for measures in the Screening and Prevention domain.

• Among members surveyed in the commercial population, patient experience ratings for office visits in 2020 were higher than 2018 ratings for five of the eight measures reported.

• The unplanned all-payer readmission rate for Massachusetts acute care hospitals was 15.9% in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CHIA Focus on Provider Quality Interactive Data (Updated September 2021)