History

Transforming public health care financing

With the support of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Center for Health Care Financing at the University of Massachusetts Medical School was founded in 1996 to provide the Commonwealth with a stable, well-resourced team of experts to meet ambitious cost savings and revenue targets. Now part of the Medical School’s health care consulting division, Commonwealth Medicine, the Center has become a vital resource to enhance state health care operations across the country while saving millions of dollars every year.

Overcoming roadblocks

The Center was established to help Massachusetts and other states overcome specific fiscal challenges. States need additonal resources to assure the integrity of their Medicaid programs and control expenditures, which typically can consume about one-third of their annual budgets. Faced with inconsistent administrative budgets, they have difficulty maintaining sufficient staffing and technology resources. And their focus on routine savings and revenue targets inhibits their ability to invest in new savings initiatives.

In the years since its formation, the Center for Health Care Financing, in collaboration with MassHealth and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, has provided Massachusetts' state government with the resources to save Medicaid costs and recover revenue. The success of the Center’s work in Massachusetts has led to opportunities to meet some of these same challenges in other states.

Uniquely positioned

As part of a public university system, the Center is uniquely positioned to help health and human service agencies enhance accessibility and funding of health care services. Dedicated to sharing knowledge and transforming public health care financing, the Center's team places a high priority on data research and analysis, information technology, and serving the public interest.

The Center gives Massachusetts and other states what they cannot find in the private sector: A high-performing and less expensive public option for a broad range of third-party liability, benefit coordination, federal revenue maximization, program integrity, and revenue operations activities. There is no single public vendor, or combination of vendors, that performs the scope of savings and revenue projects that the Center manages and conducts on behalf of public, nonprofit clients. 

The timeline below highlights the growth of the Center and provides a snapshot of the activities it performs on behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.