Over the past ten days, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Mass. Hospital Association have both issued reports on health plan performance in Massachusetts.  The state’s report - issued by the Massachusetts Division of Insurance - focuses on health plan administrative spending and health care claims costs from 2002 through 2007.

On administrative spending, the state’s report confirms what the plans have been saying for […]

A few days ago, Doug Brown wrote an opinion piece in the Boston Globe about UMass Memorial Health Care’s experience with public reporting of cardiac surgery outcomes.  The article speaks for itself, but the short story is this - when Massachusetts expanded the number of hospitals who could do cardiac surgery in 2000, the state established a public reporting […]

There was a story in the Boston Business Journal last week about the delays incurred by the MA Health Care Quality and Cost Council in trying to put up a web site that would show — for the first time — what the private sector actually pays providers for health care services in Massachusetts.

The story says, and […]