Massachusetts

The primary care system in Massachusetts is broken and getting worse, new state report says – The Boston Globe

Published

12 months ago

January 17, 2025

The primary care system in Massachusetts is broken and getting worse, new state report says – The Boston Globe

Primary care, the foundation of the state’s health care industry, is crumbling, and Massachusetts is running out of time to fix it, according to a report published Thursday by the state’s Health Policy Commission, which sounded the alarm on many ways the front door to the health care industry is broken.

Among the problems: high and growing rates of residents reporting difficulty accessing primary care; an aging and increasingly dissatisfied physician workforce; and an anemic pipeline of new clinicians.

“I worry when I look at some of this data that the state of primary care has crossed a line from which recovery will be very difficult, unless we take action soon,” the commission’s executive director, David Seltz, said in an interview.

The report sets the stage for the work of a new state-appointed primary care task force, created by a health care law signed earlier this month. The law outlines that the new 25-member group will consider issuing recommendations related to increasing recruitment and retention of the primary care workforce and establishing a target for how much insurers should spend on primary care.

Such goals would put Massachusetts more in line with other states, including California, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington, which have set benchmarks for primary care spending. Seltz called such efforts an important way to rebalance the incentives of the market.

“This is an opportunity to shift the dialogue, to one of: ‘What can we do immediately to relieve this deep challenge?’” Seltz said.

While the findings set the stage for reform, they are perhaps not a surprise. Previous reports on primary care have been blaring the warning signal for years. Increasingly high portions of residents have said they had difficulty accessing health care. Analysis on health care spending has shown dwindling amounts of health care dollars going to primary care.

But the report lays out in stark terms just how dire the prognosis on primary care is.

Among the findings:

Patients’ ability to access primary care is bad and getting worse. New patients must wait an average of 40 days in Boston, twice as long as the average of 15 other cities studied. Access to primary care worsened across the state in recent years, with such issues especially pronounced in lower-income communities.
A lack of primary care access means more reliance on emergency departments, which are more costly places to get care. In 2023, a whopping two-thirds of those who sought care in hospitals’ emergency departments said they were there because they couldn’t get an appointment in a doctor’s office or clinic.
Massachusetts has a lot of doctors — the highest total physicians per capita in the country. However the vast majority of those physicians are specialists. Compared to other states, Massachusetts has the fifth lowest share of primary care physicians.
The primary care workforce is aging, with an estimated half of primary care physicians over the age of 55.
The pipeline for new primary care doctors is dwindling, with only one in seven new Massachusetts physicians in 2021 going into primary care — among the lowest share in the country.

A primary driver of the current challenge is related to the low reimbursement rates primary care receives relative to other specialties and hospital services, the report states, a factor that disincentivizes both new graduates from entering the field and the health care industry from investing in it.

Beyond the low pay, primary care can be an exhausting job, requiring myriad billing and administrative tasks, increased documentation requirements, and visits too short to accommodate the core point of primary care — caring for the patient.

Dr. Alecia McGregor, a commissioner and an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, noted the state is seeing evidence of that very burnout and corporatization of medicine, with both those complaints cited as key reasons primary care doctors at Mass General Brigham recently filed to unionize.

The state is currently making up for primary care physician shortages by leaning more on nurse practitioners and physician assistants, together known as “advanced practice providers.” However the share of even those providers working in primary care is dropping, in part because of the low pay.

“Relying on advanced practice providers to serve as (primary care providers) instead of physicians may not resolve challenges related to the availability of providers if we can’t improve job sustainability in the field of primary care,” said Sasha Albert, associate director of research and cost trends at the Health Policy Commission, during a presentation at Thursday’s commission meeting.

Beyond setting the stage for a new task force, Commissioner Tim Foley said the “scary” report emphasized the importance of the commission remaining focused on drivers of the recruitment and retention challenges.

“It just highlights again our need to continue to focus on the workforce issues,” said Foley, who is also the head of union 1199SEIU, which represents health care workers. “We had the hearing on the impact of the workforce, and it hasn’t gotten any better. It’s probably gotten worse.”

Jessica Bartlett can be reached at jessica.bartlett@globe.com. Follow her @ByJessBartlett.

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Massachusetts

See top 50 highest-paid state workers in Massachusetts in 2025

Published

2 hours ago

January 12, 2026

Press Room

See top 50 highest-paid state workers in Massachusetts in 2025

In 2025, University of Massachusetts employees earned some of the largest salaries among state workers.

For example, Francisco Martin, head basketball coach at UMass Amherst, made $2.18 million last year, according to the Office of the Comptroller’s statewide payroll database. Dr. Michael Collins, chancellor of UMass Chan Medical School, made $1.57 million.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts paid a total of $10.89 billion to state employees in 2025, including $1.82 billion to UMass employees, $955.4 million to MBTA employees, $680.68 million to trial court employees and $486.19 million to Department of Developmental Services employees.

The public payroll also lists the 2025 salaries for Gov. Maura Healey, Attorney General Andrea Campbell and other public officials. They didn’t make the top 50, but their pay is listed below.

Check out the 50 highest-paid Massachusetts state workers in 2025.

50 highest-paid state workers in MA in 2025

Here were the 50 highest-paid Massachusetts state workers in 2025, according to the statewide payroll:

Francisco Martin – UMass Head Basketball Coach ($2.18 million)
Michael Collins – UMass Chan Medical School Chancellor, Senior Vice President of Health Sciences ($1.57 million)
Joseph Harasymiak – UMass Head Football Coach ($1.41 million)
Terence Flotte – UMass Chan Medical School Executive Deputy Chancellor & Provost, T.H. Chan School of Medicine Dean ($1.18 million)
Partha Chakrabarti – UMass Chan Medical School Executive Vice Chancellor for Innovation & Business Development ($1.01 million)
Ryan Bamford – UMass Athletic Director ($912,226)
Martin Meehan – UMass President ($879,454)
Lisa Colombo – UMass Chan Medical School Executive Vice Chancellor of ForHealth Consulting ($821,872)
Javier Reyes – UMass Amherst Chancellor ($731,684)
Donald Brown – Former UMass Head Football Coach ($705,440)
Gregory Carvel – UMass Hockey Coach ($701,048)
Marcelo Suarez-Orozco – UMass Boston Chancellor ($699,908)
John Lindstedt – UMass Chan Medical School Executive Vice Chancellor for Administration & Finance ($699,175)
Kenneth Rock – UMass Chan Medical School Chair in Biomedical Research ($692,780)
Katherine Fitzgerald – UMass Chan Medical School Department of Medicine Vice Chair ($676,959)
Gregory Volturo – UMass Chan Medical School Chair in Emergency Medicine ($644,380)
Mark Fuller – UMass Dartmouth Chancellor ($626,750)
Anne Massey – UMass Isenberg School of Management Dean ($599,242)
Peter Reinhart – UMass Institute for Applied Life Sciences Founding Director ($574,265)
Julie Chen – UMass Lowell Chancellor ($549,614)
Andrew McCallum – UMass Center for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence Director ($544,451)
David Flanagan – UMass Chan Medical School Deputy Executive Vice Chancellor for Facilities Management ($533,562)
Donald Towsley – UMass Quantum Information Systems Institute Director ($528,922)
Fouad Abd-El-Khalick – UMass Provost, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs ($515,870)
Lisa Calise – UMass Senior Vice President for Administration & Finance, Treasurer ($511,275)
Phillip Eng – MBTA General Manager ($509,114)
James Healy – UMass Chan Deputy Vice Chancellor for Management ($496,647)
Adam Wise – UMass Boston Vice Chancellor for University Advancement ($491,793)
Mindy Hull – Massachusetts Chief Medical Examiner ($491,017)
Roger Davis – UMass Chan Medical School Program in Molecular Medicine Chair ($486,238)
Celia Schiffer – UMass Institute for Applied Life Sciences Chair of Biochemistry & Molecular Biotechnology ($478,484)
Jeroan Allison – UMass Chan Medical School Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences Chair ($477,782)
Craig Mello – UMass Chan Medical School Chair in Molecular Medicine ($476,992)
Mary Ahn – UMass Chan Medical School Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs ($475,597)
James Watkins – UMass Associate Vice Chancellor for Research & Engagement, Strategic Research Initiatives ($474,133)
David McManus – UMass Chan Professor and Chair of Medicine ($471,586)
Richard Gregory – UMass Chan Medical School Department of Molecular, Cell & Cancer Biology Chair ($469,918)
Maxwell Mayer – UMass Chan Medical School Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences ($469,843)
Sanjay Raman – UMass Dean of Engineering ($468,972)
Nefertiti Walker – UMass Senior Vice President for Academic & Student Affairs & Equity ($462,152)
Fousseni Chabi-Yo – UMass Isenberg School of Management Finance Department Chair ($461,411)
Murugappan Muthukumar – UMass Wilmer D. Barrett Professor ($460,783)
Mark Johnson – UMass Chan Medical School Chair in Neurosurgery ($458,421)
Hong Yu – UMass Lowell Center of Biomedical and Health Research in Data Sciences Director ($458,025)
Sheldon Zhang – UMass Lowell School of Criminology and Justice Studies Professor ($453,950)
Albertha Walhout – UMass Chan Medical School Department of Systems Biology Chair, Chair in Biomedical Research ($450,591)
Zhiping Weng – UMass Chan Medical School Chair in Biomedical Research ($450,591)
Beth McCormick – UMass Chan Medical School Department of Microbiology Chair ($450,591)
Shlomo Zilberstein – UMass Amherst Professor of Computer Science ($450,108)
Abdallah Georges Assaf – UMass Isenberg School of Management Professor ($447,486)

How much did Gov. Maura Healey make in 2025?

Gov. Maura Healey did not break the top 50, making $242,509 as a state employee in 2025, according to the payroll.

Her salary increased from $222,185 in 2024 and $220,288 in 2023.

How much did Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll make in 2025?

Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll made $216,292 in 2025, according to the state payroll.

Her salary increased from $198,165 in 2024 and $187,952 in 2023.

How much did Attorney General Andrea Campbell make in 2025?

Attorney General Andrea Campbell made $223,495 as a state employee in 2025, according to the official payroll.

This salary is up from $222,639 in 2024 and $203,401 in 2023.

How much did Massachusetts State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble make in 2025?

Massachusetts State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble made $292,711 in 2025, according to the state payroll. Noble was named colonel in October 2024.

How much did Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin make in 2025?

Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin made $202,427 as a state employee in 2025, according to the payroll.

In 2024, he made $201,850, and in 2023, he made $187,433.

How much did State Treasurer and Receiver General Deborah B. Goldberg make in 2025?

State Treasurer and Receiver General Deborah B. Goldberg made $260,637 in 2025, according to the state payroll.

Goldberg made $238,794 in 2024 and $236,901 in 2023.

How much did State Auditor Diana DiZoglio make in 2025?

State Auditor Diana DiZoglio made $253,494 in 2025, according to the state payroll.

Her salary increased from $229,377 in 2024 and $213,224 in 2023.

How much did former State Police Trooper Michael Proctor make in 2025?

Now-former State Police Trooper Michael Proctor made $3,617 in 2025, according to the state payroll.

Proctor, who served as the lead investigator in the Karen Read case, was put on unpaid leave in July 2024 and then fired in March, accused of violating four department policies.

In 2024, Proctor was paid $79,266, and in 2023, he was paid $146,053.

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Massachusetts

Update: Prepare for snow squall in 4 Massachusetts counties Sunday evening

Published

14 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Update: Prepare for snow squall in 4 Massachusetts counties Sunday evening

An updated report was issued from the National Weather Service on Sunday at 6:14 p.m. for a snow squall until 7 p.m. for Franklin, Worcester, Hampshire and Hampden counties.

“At 6:13 p.m., a snow squall was along a line extending from near Goshen to Granby to near Burlington to near Woodbury Center and moving southeast at 45 MPH,” says the weather service.

Expect a snow squall in the following locations:

New Britain, West Hartford, Bristol, Chicopee, Southington, Westfield, Holyoke, Windsor, Northampton, and Agawam around 6:20 p.m.
Springfield, Hartford, Enfield, Amherst, Newington, Wethersfield, South Windsor, Berlin, Longmeadow, and East Windsor around 6:25 p.m.
Manchester, East Hartford, Glastonbury, Ludlow, Rocky Hill, East Longmeadow, Belchertown, and Pelham around 6:30 p.m.
Vernon, Ellington, Wilbraham, Somers, and Hampden around 6:35 p.m.
Tolland, Palmer, Stafford, Monson, and Bolton around 6:40 p.m.
Coventry, Ware, Hebron, Marlborough, and Andover around 6:45 p.m.
Warren and Brimfield around 6:50 p.m.

The weather service adds, “Use extra caution if you must travel into or through this squall. Rapid changes in visibility and potentially slick roads may lead to accidents.”

Snow squalls: Risks, differences, and safety seasures

What are snow squalls?

Snow squalls are brief but intense winter weather events often linked to strong cold fronts. They can cause sudden white-out conditions and icy roads within minutes, even if there’s no major winter storm happening. While they usually last less than an hour and might only result in minor snow accumulation, they pose significant risks to drivers due to reduced visibility, gusty winds, and rapidly falling temperatures. These conditions have historically led to deadly traffic accidents.

Understanding snow squalls vs. snowstorms

The main distinction between a snow squall and a snowstorm lies in their duration and intensity. Snow squalls are typically brief but intense, lasting around 30-60 minutes. In contrast, a snowstorm can stretch over several hours or even days

Snow squall warnings

Snow squall warnings are rapidly issued for specific areas, much like tornado or severe thunderstorm warnings. They offer crucial, localized information aimed at saving lives. If an alert for a snow squall is issued in your area, it’s best to postpone or avoid driving until the squall moves on.

Actions during a snow squall warning

In response to a snow squall warning, individuals should follow the guidelines provided by the weather service, which encompass the following key actions:

Avoid or delay travel: If a snow squall warning is issued for your vicinity, it’s advisable to postpone or refrain from motor travel until the squall has passed through your area. Highways and roads are particularly hazardous during snow squalls.

Reduce speed and increase visibility: If you are already in transit and cannot exit the road in time, reduce your speed, turn on your headlights and hazard lights.

Maintain safe distance: Allow plenty of distance between you and the car in front of you.

Avoid abrupt braking: It’s also best not to slam on your brakes. With slick/icy roads, this could contribute to the loss of vehicle control and also increase the risk of a chain reaction crash.

Winter weather safety tips: For comprehensive guidelines on how to stay safe before, during, and after encountering winter weather conditions, visit the weather service Winter Weather Safety page. This resource offers valuable insights and precautions to help you navigate the challenges posed by winter weather effectively.

Prepare your vehicle: Before setting out on your journey, take proactive measures to prepare your vehicle for winter conditions. This includes checking your tires, brakes, and lights, and ensuring your vehicle’s fluids are topped up. A well-maintained vehicle is better equipped to handle the challenges of winter driving.

Emergency kit essentials: Ensure your vehicle is equipped with a comprehensive emergency kit, featuring essentials such as blankets, non-perishable food, water, a flashlight, and a first-aid kit. Don’t forget to add jumper cables, flares or a reflective triangle, an ice scraper, a car cell phone charger, a map, and cat litter or sand to enhance tire traction. These provisions can prove invaluable in the event of an unforeseen breakdown or emergency during your journey.

In conclusion, when faced with a snow squall warning, prioritizing personal safety and adhering to the weather service recommendations can significantly mitigate risks. By understanding, preparing, and staying vigilant, individuals can navigate these winter hazards with greater confidence and security.

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Massachusetts

Massachusetts gas prices slightly declined from last week. Here’s how much.

Published

1 day ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Massachusetts gas prices slightly declined from last week. Here’s how much.

State gas prices slightly declined for the second consecutive week and reached an average of $2.86 per gallon of regular fuel on Monday, down from last week’s price of $2.88 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The average fuel price in state declined about 8 cents since last month. According to the EIA, gas prices across the state in the last year have been as low as $2.86 on Jan. 5, 2026, and as high as $3.11 on Sep. 8, 2025.

A year ago, the average gas price in Massachusetts was 3% higher at $2.95 per gallon.

>> INTERACTIVE: See how your area’s gas prices have changed over the years at data.southcoasttoday.com.

The average gas price in the United States last week was $2.80, making prices in the state about 2.3% higher than the nation’s average. The average national gas price is slightly lower than last week’s average of $2.81 per gallon.

USA TODAY Co. is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Please leave any feedback or corrections for this story here. This story was written by Ozge Terzioglu. Our News Automation and AI team would like to hear from you. Take this survey and share your thoughts with us.

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