This July, the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council will mandate that all health plans report race/ethnicity/language data – which is currently only required by the state of California. While this new MA mandate promotes data collection, little is known about how to develop statewide regulations to ensure standardization and consistency across the health plans and other health care organizations collecting and reporting the data.

A comprehensive assessment of MA health plans was performed by HVHC Project staff at the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings. Following this assessment, the Massachusetts Expert Panel on the Standardization of Race/Ethnicity and Language Data Reporting by Health Plans was convened and developed consensus-based standards on categories of race/ethnicity/language and methods for populating these categories at the health plan level. 

In April, HVHC staff will present to the Quality and Cost Council the Expert Panel's recommendations. These will propose standardized categories for collecting and reporting data, reporting thresholds for data, and guidelines to simplify administrative processes between health plans and providers.