Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Office of Rural Health

Massachusetts State Flex Program

What is one Core Competency your state Flex Program is working on developing through Flex activities?

Selected Core Competency: Improving Financial Stability

The Massachusetts  Flex Program has a long-standing MA Rural Hospital CEO/CFO Forum, a collaboration with CAHs and SHIP hospitals, the MA Health and Hospital Association, and Stroudwater Associates.  Through this learning and action network hospital senior leadership participates in group financial and operational benchmarking; exploration,  implementation, and ongoing development of rural models of healthcare delivery, hospital and rural health clinic feasibility and other analyses; understanding industry updates, post-pandemic trends, workforce pressures, best practices and peer-sharing. What we are also working on is the integration of other key concerns – for example, improving clinical quality, better-addressing health equity and social determinants of health – as ultimately key to financial sustainability, as well.  To that end, this year we have launched an MA rural hospital health equity affinity group, in collaboration with our QIO, Healthcentric Advisors, to support rural hospitals in complying with our ground-breaking state Medicaid program (as well as CMS and Joint Commission expectations) which provides significant and annually-increasing financial incentives for improving health equity data collection, analyses and outcomes. 

What is one activity your state is funding through SHIP?

One of our Critical Access Hospitals with an increasingly diverse demographic is participating in a Perinatal-Neonatal Quality Improvement Network (PNQIN) Maternal Equity Bundle in conjunction with hospitals across Massachusetts focused on reducing racial inequities in maternal health. SHIP funds will support training and implementation of Patient-reported Experience Measures (PREMs) and/or Mother’s Autonomy in Decision Making (MADM) scale. We hope to encourage two other SHIP hospitals who offer maternal services to engage with this effort in the future.  In a related development, the MA SHIP/FLEX Coordinator has just joined a Statewide Implementation Committee focused on reviewing levels of maternal care in an effort to identify ways to eliminate preventable perinatal morbidity and mortality.