A state office requires acute-care hospitals to collect and report patient data on race, ethnicity, and language spoken in a standardized way.
Regulation 114.1 CMR 17.00 is developed by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy (DHCFP) with input from hospitals across the state, and is intended to be part of a process to address health disparities. While many hospitals collected race-related data already, the regulation requires the data to be self-reported by patients and to be collected in a consistent way.
A 2010 study of a subset of hospitals across the state finds that leadership began using the data internally to inform their services and improve the quality of care. The study concludes, "The responses of Massachusetts hospitals to this new state regulation indicate that requiring the collection of race, ethnicity and language data can be an effective method to promote performance monitoring and quality improvement, thereby setting the stage for federal standards and incentive programs to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in the quality of health care."
