By Barbra G. Rabson
(February 2022)
Since the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the COVID pandemic spawned a reawakening about racial injustice in this country, I have been impressed and proud of the commitment to health equity at so many levels in the Massachusetts healthcare system. Company CEOs,
(January 2022)
To truly advance its equity goals, Massachusetts must take a leadership role in collecting and analyzing racial and ethnic health disparities, a new Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation (MTF) report suggests. The report underlines how Massachusetts must improve data collection and reporting requirements across health agencies to ensure
By Barbra G. Rabson
(January 2022)
At the beginning of the pandemic, I penned a post I called “Now Is the Time to Get Telehealth Right” in which I suggested that something good might emerge from what I called our “grand telehealth experiment.” Well, my friends, the pandemic may not be over
By Barbra G. Rabson
(December 2021)
As a measurement organization, MHQP has a long track record for reporting comparative performance information to drive improvements in Massachusetts healthcare. We are now focused on reporting performance on health equity and are working to generate the data to enable us to do so. MHQP and our
This important initiative is investigating the disparities that Black women experience when they seek diagnosis and management of chronic pain, and based on these findings, will begin to identify strategies to address these important issues. In the first phase of our work, MHQP conducted open-ended interviews with adult patients who have experienced chronic (> 6 months) pain and
MHQP was contracted by UMass Memorial Healthcare to conduct interviews with patients and their families in both English and Spanish to better understand barriers and race/ethnicity disparities associated with child well-visits in its network. The findings from these interviews, summarized in MHQP’s report, will be used to inform performance improvement initiatives as part of a network-wide quality improvement
As part of a study conducted in partnership with the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute (HPHCI), MHQP interviewed patients, providers and community leaders to better understand potential socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic inequities in telehealth usage in Massachusetts since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews explored topics such as insurance coverage of telehealth, access to telehealth, and
(November 2021)
MHQP is pleased to announce that, in partnership with the Greater Boston Sickle Cell Disease Association (GBSCDA), we have received an award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s (PCORI) Eugene Washington Engagement Awards program to identify new directions for research into patient-centered approaches to help people with sickle cell
(March 2021)
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the devastating inequities embedded in America’s healthcare system and highlighted the need to address the biases underlying deeply rooted and systemic health disparities in our country.
One area where these biases are quite apparent is pain management. Research has shown that Black Americans are systematically undertreated
(January 2021)
Two decades ago, in 2001, MHQP issued the first statewide Adult and Pediatric Preventive Care 
Recommendations and Immunization Guidelines in Massachusetts. At that time, providers were receiving a different set of clinical guidelines from each of the health plans they worked with. Recognizing this situation as both confusing and wasteful,
