Relative Price and Provider Price Variation

CHIA reports annually on provider price variation in Massachusetts. The relative price (RP) metric facilitates comparison of average provider prices while accounting for differences in patient acuity, the types of services delivered to patients, and the different insurance product types (e.g., HMO, PPO) that payers offer.

In August 2025, CHIA released relative price results with data through CY 2023 for Massachusetts hospitals and physician groups. CHIA has also produced an interactive Tableau dashboard allowing users to explore this data in more detail.

For chronic care, rehabilitation, and behavioral health hospitals (including private psychiatric hospitals, substance use disorder facilities, and dedicated behavioral health units within acute hospitals), CHIA calculates payer-specific RP, which enables comparison of provider prices within a payer’s network of hospitals that provide similar services. Payer-specific RP is also calculated for physician organizations.

For acute hospitals, in addition to payer-specific RP, CHIA calculates cross-payer statewide relative price (S-RP), which enables comparison of acute hospital prices across all commercial payers.*

*Note: Data does not exist for all combinations of filter selections in the interactive dashboard. Where no data exists, an intentionally blank page will appear. Hospital cohorts are mutually exclusive and include academic medical centers, community hospitals, community-high public payer hospitals, teaching hospitals, and specialty acute hospitals. S-RP results for specialty acute hospitals are not shown; these hospitals are not comparable because of their unique patient populations and/or services. See the Relative Price methodology report for more detailed information.

CY2023 Massachusetts Relative Price Data

Updated 8/7/2025