Scorecard reveals wide disparities in care across the country

NEW YORK – Healthcare access, cost, quality and outcomes can vary greatly from one community to the next, both within states and across states, depending on the performance of the healthcare system available to residents, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.

In the first scorecard measuring how 306 local U.S. areas are doing on key healthcare indicators such as insurance coverage, preventive care, and mortality rates, researchers at The Commonwealth Fund found significant differences between the best- and worst-performing localities. Major U.S. cities also showed wide disparities on many key measures of healthcare, with San Francisco and Seattle ranking among the top 75 local areas in the country, and Houston and Miami ranking in the bottom 75. An interactive map [see below] accompanying the report allows comparison of cities and communities across the country.

The stark differences in healthcare add up to real lives and dollars. According to the scorecard, 66 million people live in the lowest-performing local areas in the country. If all local areas could do as well as the top performers, 30 million more adults and children would have health insurance, 1.3 million more elderly would receive safe or appropriate medications, and Medicare would save billions of dollars on preventable hospitalizations and readmissions.

The report, "Rising to the Challenge: Results from a Scorecard on Local Health System Performance, 2012," and the online interactive map [see below] rank local areas on 43 performance metrics grouped into categories that include access to healthcare, healthcare prevention and treatment, potentially avoidable hospital use and cost and health outcomes. The 43 metrics include potentially preventable deaths before age 75, prevalence of unsafe medication prescribing, the proportion of adults who receive recommended preventive care, and the percentage of uninsured adults.

The report finds there is room to improve everywhere, with no community consistently in the lead on all the factors that were measured. However, there were geographic patterns: Local areas in the Northeast and upper Midwest often ranked at the top, while local areas in the South, particularly the Gulf Coast and southern central states, tended to rank at the bottom on many measures.  Read the full article here.