Massachusetts Healthcare Law Overhaul Underway

At yesterday’s meeting of the Public Health Council Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) released another round of proposed regulatory changes. On the board were regulations for long-term care facilities, hospice programs, and temporary nursing service agencies, as well as requirements for training nursing assistants in long-term care facilities. Updated regulations for the Drug Formulary Board (formerly the List of Interchangeable Drug Products regulations) were also presented. Senior DPH staff presented the proposed regulations, highlighting key objectives. Council members were very engaged in the discussions, asking numerous questions and submitting comments. Commissioner Monica Bharel, MD, MPH, praised DPH staff for their hard work on the amendments and the Council for supporting these ongoing efforts.

As with previously published proposed regulatory changes, these efforts are consistent with Governor Baker’s Executive Order 562, which called for state agencies to review and, where possible, streamline, simplify, and improve their regulations. DPH’s presentations to the Public Health Council on each of these proposed changes reflect DPH’s mission to promote high quality care, industry standardization, and strong consumer protections while ensuring that the regulations reflect current standards (including CMS and other requirements, where applicable). DPH also hopes to streamline its processes wherever possible and eliminate provider confusion and duplicate and outdated regulatory requirements. DPH intends to issue subregulatory guidance in a number of areas to provide flexibility in the future.

The proposed regulations and DPH staff presentations are available below. DPH intends to hold a public hearing to solicit comments on the changes and will also accept written comments. We will update this table to provide information on the proposed hearing dates and public comment periods.

We’ll be posting more detailed summaries and analyses of each of these proposed fixes in the coming days. Don’t touch that knob!