Massachusetts

The Massachusetts House of Representatives has passed sweeping telehealth legislation, accompanying a companion bill passed by the Senate in November 2017.  While Massachusetts is often considered a leader in health care innovation, the Commonwealth has not enacted significant legislation in this area for several years, and is among the minority of states without a meaningful telehealth insurance coverage…… Continue reading this entry

On March 30, 2018, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed into law a bill intended to provide individuals with more privacy protection from their health insurance companies. The “Protecting Access to Confidential Health Care” Act (PATCH Act) gives patients the right to control who receives a summary of payment form after care is provided, helping patients…… Continue reading this entry

In a previous blog post, we began to dissect the new Massachusetts State Senate bill, “An Act Furthering Health Empowerment and Affordability by Leveraging Transformative Health Care,” and focused on a provision that would ban hospitals from billing payors for many common outpatient hospital services.  In this second of a multipart series, we review how…… Continue reading this entry

In some states, including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, “site neutrality” for outpatient hospital reimbursement is factoring into state-specific health reform and cost containment initiatives. This potentially goes well-beyond Medicare’s limitation of reimbursement at new off-campus outpatient hospital departments under Section 603 of the Bi-partisan Budget Act of 2015. Since Massachusetts’ state health reform law was…… Continue reading this entry