How Does Your State Score?

• Author: Becker, Colleen
• Position: STATESTATS - Commonwealth Fund Scorecard on State Health System Performance - Brief article

With states facing ever greater pressure to restrain costs and improve access to health care, policymakers have a new resource to gauge how their state compares over time and with others. In its May 2018 "Scorecard on State Health System Performance," the Commonwealth Fund uses recently available federal data (generally from 2015 or 2016) to assess states on 43 performance indicators grouped in five areas: access and affordability, prevention and treatment, avoidable hospital use and cost, healthy lives, and disparities.

Overall, the scorecard found that most state health systems improved between 2013 and 2016, with Arkansas, Louisiana, New York, Oklahoma and West Virginia showing gains in the greatest number of indicators. For example, 23 states reported fewer hospital readmissions of older adults within 30 days of their discharge; 28 states showed improvement in the number of adults with mental illness who...