Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association Better Together: Preparing for the Next Public Health Emergency
MHA’s Better Together report provides a comprehensive review of how the commonwealth’s healthcare system responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lessons learned from that event that will be of use during a future public health emergency.
MHA convened more than 175 leaders from 54 organizations to help construct the report, which incorporates responses from topic-specific roundtable discussions, one-on-one interviews with CEOs and state leaders, and replies to an accompanying survey.
Better Together’s recommendations center on how providers, policymakers, and other healthcare interests in Massachusetts can address the:
- essential role of collaboration and effective communication across the entire care continuum, and in collaboration with the state;
- changing nature of care delivery, including the necessary expansion of telehealth;
- need to grow and empower the healthcare workforce, including how to support and deploy a limited workforce while alleviating employee strain and burnout;
- continued focus on health equity and behavioral health to ensure quality care for all;
- role of dynamic data and analytics, including the need of a real-time situation awareness tool; and
- future of the supply chain, involving, among other actions, the development of a statewide emergency supply chain infrastructure.