Partners Healthcare

The Attorney General issued a report last year examining health care costs in Massachusetts. The report made several assertions about market power driving hospital prices, and it also claimed that the quality of health care delivery was the same across the state. Since then, government officials, opinion leaders and the media have frequently cited these claims as fact.

However, these assertions deserve closer scrutiny, especially in light of subsequent reports from multiple trusted sources – including noted Massachusetts health care expert Paul Dreyer, PhD and nationally known health care economist and anti-trust expert Margaret Guerin-Calvert – that question the Attorney General’s findings.

In his report featured in a recent Boston Globe article, Dreyer noted that the Attorney General’s analysis was incorrect and fundamentally flawed. Instead of market power driving hospital prices, as the Attorney General asserted, Dreyer found evidence that price correlated to factors other than market share, including the severity of patients’ illnesses, the number of Medicare/Medicaid patients a hospital cares for, and the size of a hospital’s teaching and education program.

Health care economists Guerin-Calvert and Guillermo Israilevich raised similar questions about the Attorney General’s report. They looked at the costs hospitals incur in providing patient care and why those costs may differ among various types of hospitals (demonstrating the consistent relationship between hospital prices and the cost of providing care). The American Hospital Association has since noted that the pair’s research “casts serious doubt” on the claims about market power asserted by the Attorney General.

The Attorney General’s report also concluded that the quality of care is roughly the same among health care providers in Massachusetts. In fact, the Attorney General report stated there is, “little material variation in the quality of care delivered” among health care providers in Massachusetts. (Download the full report, “Examination of Health Care Cost Trends and Drivers,” 3/16/10.)

According to the Boston Business Journal, that is not the case in Massachusetts. A story posted last week, “Study Says Quality Varies Among Mass. Physician Groups,” questions the validity of the Attorney’s General claim by citing subsequent research from Health Care Quality Partners, a nonprofit that evaluates care. This story reflects the findings of other news outlets such as The Boston Globe, which has also reported on the wide variation in quality of care since the Attorney General report came out.

Partners HealthCare continues to strive to elevate the quality of health care in Massachusetts and beyond while working to control costs.