New data released June 1 from the national Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality show that states have made modest gains in improving the quality of healthcare but have not managed to improve disparities among minority and low-income residents, according to the 2010 Statewide Snapshots, based on the National Healthcare Disparities Report.
The agency, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has been reporting on progress in healthcare quality since 2003 with the goal of improving healthcare quality and reducing healthcare disparities since then. The National Healthcare Disparities Report is mandated by Congress and produced annually.
"Every American should have access to high-quality, appropriate and safe healthcare, and we need to increase our efforts to achieve that goal because our slow progress is not acceptable,” agency director Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy said in a statement. "These AHRQ 2010 State Snapshots not only provide states with a benchmark on how they are doing in these areas, but they also provide resources that states can use to make improvements."
The 2010 State Snapshots, an interactive Web-based tool, show whether a state has improved or worsened on specific healthcare quality measures. For each state and the District of Columbia, this tool features an individual performance summary of more than 100 measures, such as preventing pressure sores, screening for diabetes-related foot problems and giving recommended care to pneumonia patients. It also compares each state to others in its region and the nation overall.
States that saw the greatest overall performance improvement in healthcare quality in 2010 were New Hampshire, Minnesota, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. But challenges remain for other states like Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, which saw the smallest overall improvement in health performance last year.
Among minority and low-income Americans, the level of healthcare quality and access to services did not improve. The size of disparities related to race and income varied widely across states.
The 2010 National Healthcare Disparities found that blacks and American Indians and Alaska Natives received worse care than whites for about 40 percent of tracked criteria, which include things like patient and family engagement, safety, care coordination, overuse of services and access to care. Hispanics received worse care than non-Hispanic whites for about 60 percent of these quality measures while Asians received worse care than whites for about 20 percent of the criteria. Low-income individuals received worse care than high-income people for about 80 percent of those areas.
According to the report, low-income individuals under age 65 were 4.7 times more likely to be uninsured than those with higher incomes. Blacks were 1.7 times more likely than whites to leave the emergency department without being seen, and Hispanics were 3.3 times more likely to have a new AIDS care per 100,000 people over age 13. Asians were 1.3 more likely than whites to not have a primary care doctor.
The report also tracked disparities in the kinds of health services people use and in what areas of the country those disparities occurred. For example, services like cancer screening, diabetes management, pap smears and mammograms are getting worse over time.
Health disparities among residents of inner city and rural areas and states in the central part of the country still exist, according to the report. Compared with residents of large city suburbs, residents of large inner cities received worse care for about a quarter of quality measures tracked in the report. Residents of rural areas received worse care for about 30 percent of tracked measures.
Among minority and low-income Americans, the level of healthcare quality and access to services did not improve. The size of disparities related to race and income varied widely across the states.
Email
Print
Reprints/Licensing
Comment