Hospitals in Massachusetts may start asking more personal questions at check-in. The purpose is to more narrowly define patients to measure health disparities and take more federal money:
These various efforts dovetail with the new insurance law, which will
require all Massachusetts residents to have medical insurance by July
1, 2007. The law allows hospitals to earn millions of dollars in new
Medicaid payments — the exact amount to be determined later — if they
prove they are reducing disparities in the delivery of care for
minorities. To measure the hospitals’ progress, Medicaid and several
advisory groups will have to develop specific measures, such as
satisfaction rates among different ethnic groups or the availability of
interpreters.
