Here are five things to know about the Commonwealth Funds’ report and its findings.
1. The report grades and ranks the 50 states and the District of Columbia on 42 indicators grouped into five categories: access and affordability, prevention and treatment, avoidable hospital use and cost, healthy lives, and equity. This year’s report measures change in performance during 2013 and 2014, including the effects of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance expansion.
2. There is an up to eightfold difference between the top- and bottom-ranked states, indicating a wide variation in performance state to state.
3. The highest-performing states overall were in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. The top five states overall are Minnesota, Vermont, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
4. The lowest-performing states tend to be in the South. From the bottom up, the five worst-performing states are Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama.
5. The report’s findings signal the “need for greater attention to prevention” as rates of preventative care declined in several states.
See the full report here for more findings.
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