Mass General Brigham pledges to cut costs $70m a year
Bulk of savings would come from cutting cost of outpatient visits
By 
MASS GENERAL BRIGHAM says it intends to cut spending $70 million a year across its hospital network to comply with a Health Policy Commission directive to bring its costs in line with the state’s health cost benchmark.
In a first-of-its-kind filing, the state’s largest hospital system said its performance improvement plan would meet the savings target by reducing hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and imaging services (saving $10.8 million); shifting care to lower-cost settings, including community hospitals and at-home and virtual treatment (saving $5.3 million), and reducing prices for outpatient visits at its academic medical centers, ConnectorCare, and its insurance subsidiary’s services (saving $53.8 million).
Mass General Brigham said its savings could end up being higher if other initiatives bear fruit, including programs designed to reduce use of skilled nursing facilities and value-based care programs that set overall spending targets and incentivize the hospital system to live within them.
No hospital or hospital system has been directed by the Health Policy Commission to come up with a plan for reining in its spending previously, so the filing and its upcoming review represent uncharted waters.
Paul Hattis, a senior fellow at the Lown Institute, said the filing talks about spending cuts but doesn’t clearly spell out whether overall spending will actually decrease by that amount. He also said the $70 million in spending reductions represents only a tiny portion of the hospital system’s nearly $12 billion in patient revenue.
Hattis called the plan “wholly inadequate.” He added, “This is like pocket change in my mind.”
In January, when the Health Policy Commission ordered Mass General Brigham to come up with a performance improvement plan, the hospital system said it disagreed with the decision.
In its filing, Mass General Brigham sounded a different tone. “Mass General Brigham acknowledges its contribution to spending growth in the Commonwealth and looks forward to working with the Health Policy Commission, policymakers, and payers to come up with solutions to meaningfully address the health care spending challenge,” the hospital system said.
Still, the filing makes the case that Mass General Brigham is being held to a higher standard. The Health Policy Commission said in January that total commercial spending on primary care patients affiliated with the hospital system was $293 million above benchmark limits between 2014 and 2019.
Mass General Brigham said the Health Policy Commission more recently has been focusing on unadjusted health care spending, which the hospital system said is the focus of its performance improvement plan.