Health Disparities

Strategies for Meaningfully Engaging MassHealth Members to Inform Program and Policy Decisions

Recognizing that member input is essential for effectively improving health outcomes and advancing equity, MassHealth and other Medicaid agencies across the country are increasingly engaging with members to inform program and policy design. MassHealth currently employs a variety of approaches for soliciting member feedback on program design and policy changes, and has signaled its commitment to strengthening its member engagement approach.

This report aims to inform MassHealth’s efforts to strengthen its overall member engagement strategy. The report:

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Holding on to Home: A Primer on MassHealth Estate Recovery

Federal law requires states to recoup costs from certain Medicaid members’ estates – the money and possessions left after someone dies – if they received long-term services and supports (LTSS), such as care in a nursing facility or at home. But some states, including Massachusetts, exceed the federal minimum and recover the cost of all Medicaid-covered services that are provided to members over age 55. This means far more members are affected because it is not just limited to those who use LTSS.

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An Overview of Peer Health Care Professions in Massachusetts

Peer supports are an important component of the health care system in Massachusetts. Peers provide a vital bridge to services by offering empathy, information, encouragement, and navigational assistance to people who face linguistic and cultural access barriers, stigma, absence of a support network, and other challenges. Peers are part of the communities they serve and often share lived experiences with the individuals they work with, making them uniquely qualified to foster trust in the health care system where it might be lacking.

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Peer Workforce Thumb

Achieving a Racially and Ethnically Equitable Health Care Delivery System in Massachusetts: A Vision, Toolkit, and Proposed Action Plan

This report proposes a statewide Health Equity Action Plan that offers an organizing structure, process, and set of practical steps for collectively achieving a racially and ethnically equitable health care delivery system in Massachusetts. The Health Equity Action Plan is accompanied by a toolkit, which includes an illustrative set of interventions and best practices that providers, health care delivery system leaders, and other stakeholders can deploy to achieve the envisioned system.

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The Time is Now: The $5.9 Billion Case for Massachusetts Health Equity Reform

Racial and ethnic disparities in health care access, quality, and outcomes have been well documented in Massachusetts and across the country. Solutions for reducing inequities in health require investments of time and resources for which there will always be competing priorities. In understanding the value of these investments, it is critical to recognize that in addition to the human toll, they represent a significant economic burden to individuals and families, health care providers, employers, public and private sector payers, and the overall Massachusetts economy.

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Problem Management Plus: An Evidence-Based Approach to Expanding Access to Community-Based Mental Health Supports

Problem Management Plus (PM+) is a proven, scalable, and cost-effective low-intensity mental health intervention that can be delivered by trained non-clinical workers for people who are experiencing common mental health conditions, such as anxiety or depression, or stressful life problems. PM+ fills a gap in the behavioral health services system by providing early intervention and potential prevention of more acute behavioral health service needs.

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Closing the Coverage Gaps: Reducing Health Insurance Disparities in Massachusetts

Massachusetts has been exemplary in developing health insurance coverage policies to cover its residents. By 2019, the state’s uninsurance rate was 3.0 percent, the lowest rate in the nation, representing about 204,000 uninsured residents. While the state’s overall uninsured rate at a given point in time is low, more than twice as many people - 503,000, or 7.3 percent of the population - experienced a gap in coverage over the previous twelve months. And importantly, not all groups benefit equally.

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A Focus on Health Care: Five Key Priorities for the Next Administration

Massachusetts’ historical achievements in bold and innovative health care policy have positioned the state as a national leader in transforming health care coverage, access, affordability, and quality. Yet despite decades of progress, the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to ignore that not all Massachusetts residents are able to access, afford, or experience health care equally.

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Creating a Robust, Diverse, and Resilient Behavioral Health Workforce in Massachusetts

The behavioral health workforce in Massachusetts is in crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the prevalence of behavioral health issues and demand for services, exposing and aggravating the vulnerabilities of Massachusetts’ behavioral health workforce and delivery system. Health care, including behavioral health care, has been among the industries hardest hit by the “Great Resignation,” exacerbating workforce shortages that predated the pandemic.

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The MassHealth Proposed Demonstration Extension 2022–2027: Building on Success, Focusing on Equity

Massachusetts administers much of MassHealth through an 1115 Demonstration waiver, approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which it has extended several times since it was originally approved in 1995. In December 2021, Massachusetts submitted a request to CMS to extend its Demonstration for another five years.

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Behavioral Health During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Update on Need and Access in Massachusetts 2020/2021

This brief provides an updated snapshot of the need for behavioral health care and experiences accessing it in the Commonwealth as of 2020/2021, based on a new survey commissioned by the Foundation.  This survey was fielded by NORC at the University of Chicago between December 2020 and March 2021 and gathered information on the need for and access to behavioral health care among Massachusetts adults ages 19 and older and their close relatives.

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Cover of Behavioral Health and COVID report

Estimating Cost Reductions Associated with the Community Support Program for People Experiencing Chronic Homelessness

This report presents the results of a study analyzing the impact of the Community Support Program for People Experiencing Chronic Homelessness (CSPECH) on the utilization and cost of health care services. CSPECH is an innovative program through which MassHealth reimburses community-based support services provided to chronically homeless individuals residing in permanent supportive housing.

Community Matters: Exploring the Link Between Community Characteristics and Uninsurance in Massachusetts

Despite the near-universal health insurance coverage that the state has maintained for nearly a decade, pockets of high uninsurance remain for both adults and children in communities across Massachusetts. This brief, prepared by the Urban Institute, explores the relationship between community characteristics and the uninsured rate for people of all ages in Massachusetts and highlights the geographic and community context of the remaining uninsured. It also provides data to better target outreach and enrollment activities.

Health Care and Social Service Spending and Outcomes: How Does Massachusetts Compare with Other States?

International comparisons of industrialized countries show that those with a higher ratio of social service spending relative to health care spending have better health outcomes. This finding is consistent with decades of research underscoring the importance of social, behavioral, and environmental factors on health outcomes.

Leveraging the Social Determinants of Health: What Works?

Social determinants of health, which encompass social, behavioral and environmental influences on one’s health, have taken center stage in recent health policy discussions. While research indicates that greater attention to these non-medical factors may improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs, translating this evidence into actionable recommendations for policy makers and others has been challenging.

Closing the Gap on Health Care Disparities

From 2008 through 2011, the Foundation supported 11 community-based coalitions across Massachusetts through its Closing the Gap on Health Care Disparities Initiative. This report, prepared by Mary Coonan and Terry Saunders Lane of The Center for Social Policy, University of Massachusetts Boston, explores areas of coalition development, system change, and public awareness.