Sudders: Surge showed strength of Mass. health care system
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Marylou Sudders, the Massachusetts secretary of health and human services
The COVID-19 pandemic that has shined a light on health inequalities and exposed parts of the health care system that are not working as intended also revealed the strengths of the system in Massachusetts, Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said Tuesday.
"I have to tell you the strength of our health care system, our health care delivery system, has never been stronger than in April and May and June when the pandemic hit hard," Sudders, who has been running the state's COVID-19 command center, said during a Health Policy Commission event. "There were a couple of weekends where the system felt stretched but never overrun as has happened in other states."
The commission on Tuesday is hosting a streamlined, virtual version of its annual hearing to examine recent health care spending trends. This year, the event focuses on the pandemic's impacts. Gov. Charlie Baker, in recorded remarks, revisited the topic of the speech he gave at last year's hearing -- the health care reform bill he filed in October 2019.
Baker said some of the emergency measures put in place to respond to the COVID-19 crisis underscore the importance of ideas proposed in that bill, like permanently integrating telehealth into the state's health care system. House and Senate Democrats have been unable to agree on telehealth proposals since late July.
At the pandemic's height earlier this year, Baker said, 75 percent of mental health clinical visits occurred by telehealth.
"If the current trend of telehealth utilization continues beyond the pandemic, we can reduce costs for the health care system long term by shifting care out of higher-cost settings, and telehealth also reduces the potential for infections to spread," Baker, a former health insurance executive, said.
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