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Unsustainable: An Honest Assessment of Massachusetts’ Healthcare Performance

By Barbra G. Rabson

(July 2023)

Last month, the Commonwealth Fund published its annual scorecard on state health performance and gave Massachusetts the top overall ranking. The ranking was based on several metrics collected in 2019, 2020 and 2021 covering seven categories ― Reproductive and Women’s Health, Access and

A Chorus of Concerns About the Breakdown of Our Primary Care System

By Barbra G. Rabson

(May 2023)

It was almost four years ago when I first wrote of my concerns about the future of primary care in Massachusetts. This was on the heels of ground-shaking reports indicating that there was a national decline in primary

Massachusetts Can Finally Measure the Health of Primary Care

(An editorial published online by The Boston Globe on January 25, 2023, by Barbra G. Rabson and Katherine Gergen Barnett)

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), a nationally renowned institution of science, recently asserted that “primary care is a common

MHQP Celebrates Barbara Spivak and Julita Mir

(November 2022)

MHQP is pleased to celebrate the invaluable contributions of two members of our Board of Directors, Barbara Spivak, MD, and Julita Mir, MD, both of whom have an enormous impact on MHQP’s strategy and direction.

Barbara Spivak, MD

A primary care provider and President and CEO of the Mount Auburn Cambridge

Employee Spotlight: Raji Rajan

(November 2022)

Raji Rajan, MBA, MS, and her husband, Raj, both decided to shift their careers to work in healthcare after the medical procedure that saved Raj’s life. This was back in 2008. Raji was spending her days working as a Senior Software Engineer at Fidelity and her evenings helping Raj

Evaluating Patient Experiences of Primary Care by Visit Mode and Visit Reason During the Pandemic

(September 2022)

MHQP’s Jim Courtemanche, Nathalie McIntosh, Raji Rajan and Barbra Rabson co-authored, along with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts’ Mark Friedberg, an important study investigating adult patient experiences of, and satisfaction with, in-person, video, and telephone visits in primary care during the COVID-19

Employee Spotlight: Natalya Martins

(August 2022)

Natalya Martins, MPH, has a placard with a quote from Indigenous Australian and activist Lilla Wilson hanging in her office:

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work

It’s Time to Better Understand and Address Disparities in Patient Experiences

By Barbra G. Rabson

(July 2022) 

The pandemic has shown us that we are not doing enough to equally promote health for people of all races and ethnicities. Given that there are well-known and researched disparities across all aspects of care, it may not surprise you to learn that Black, Hispanic and Asian

Backlash Must Fuel Renewed Commitment to Health Equity

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,

Patients Really Like Telehealth. Let’s Resolve to Make It Work.

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

It’s Time We Started Collecting Data on People with Disabilities

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

Are Severe Staffing Shortages the “Long COVID” for the Healthcare System?

By Barbra G. Rabson

(October 2021) 

COVID-19 has disrupted our healthcare system in unimaginable and incalculable ways. While we hope that we may soon emerge from the intense burden created by the crisis, the long-lasting impacts of the pandemic are just beginning to come into focus. One of these long-lasting impacts – an

The Value of Primary Care: How Come They See It and We Don’t?

By Barbra G. Rabson

(July 2021) 

In May, the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) issued an important new report called Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care. It received very little attention.

This was extremely worrisome for us at MHQP because, as an organization that has been measuring

Primary Care’s Value Proposition and the Damage Done by the Pandemic

By Barbra G. Rabson

 (April 2021) 

MHQP has been measuring and publicly reporting about quality and patient experiences in primary care for nearly two decades. Never before have I known a moment such as this when I worry for the future of primary care in our state.

MHQP first began to investigate the health

From Pandemic Fix to Permanent Fixture: How to Ensure Telehealth Lives Up to Its Full Potential

By Barbra G. Rabson

(November 2020)

Telehealth utilization quickly soared in Massachusetts in the early days of the pandemic, not just because it filled an obvious need as a way for providers and patients to connect when face-to-face interactions were not possible, but also because Governor Baker issued an order requiring insurers to

Meeting the Moment in Telehealth

By Barbra G. Rabson

(August 2020)

When asked what they have learned about themselves as a clinician using telehealth in a recent MHQP survey, one physician responded, “We are an incredibly versatile lot. Our commitment to lifelong learning and constant change in our profession has trained us well for meeting this moment successfully.

“Meeting

Listen Up, America. Now is the Time to Address Racism in our Healthcare System

by Brittney Gedeon, Rising Junior and Presidential Scholar at Boston College and MHQP Summer Intern

(June 8, 2020)

The senseless death of George Floyd at the hands of four police officers in Minneapolis has shocked and outraged millions of people throughout the country. As a nation, we should condemn the racial injustices we see in policing and

Now Is the Time to Get Telehealth Right

By Barbra G. Rabson

(April 2020) 

Amid all the horror and hardship of the COVID-19 pandemic, maybe something good will emerge on the other side of it for the healthcare system. Now is our chance to finally get telehealth right.

Before the pandemic struck, MHQP was working with a distinguished panel of experts to

The Future of Primary Care in Massachusetts

By Barbra G. Rabson

(October 2019) 

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of primary care in Massachusetts. I was inspired in part by work we’ve been doing at MHQP to explore barriers to affordability through the patient’s eyes, and lack of access to primary care was one of those

The Link Between Patient Experience and Affordability: The Potential Power of Patients

By Barbra G. Rabson

(May 2019)

I’ve spent the last two decades of my career dedicated to measuring and improving patient experience and patient engagement and have always believed that listening to patients about their experiences can be our best path to improving our healthcare system. Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to see

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