Down, but Far from Out, Pueblo Makes Progress in Health
<p>For the final installment in our series profiling regions of the U.S. that improved the most on the Commonwealth Fund’s most recent <em>Scorecard on Local Health System Performance, </em>we visit <a href="/publications/case-study/2017/sep/health-care-improvement-pueblo-colorado-building-common-ground">Pueblo, Colorado</a>. The geographically isolated community, located in the state’s high-desert region, has for years faced high rates of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and disability.</p><p>Yet despite these formidable challenges, regional health care leaders have banded together in the spirt of “co-opetition” — a willingness to work together to pursue common interests while competing for patient loyalty — to share scarce resources, including medical specialists. Pueblo’s providers have also leveraged Colorado’s Medicaid expansion to enhance access to health care while improving coordination of patient services across care settings. Local improvement collaboratives, meanwhile, use data to define problems and promote shared accountability for solving them.</p>
<p>As a result of these efforts, Pueblo was one of only 14 regions of the U.S. that improved on a majority of our scorecard’s health care indicators. Learn how Pueblo did it. And also visit the <em></em><a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2017/09/13/how-communities-can-improve-he…; target="_blank"><em>Wall Street Journal’s “</em>The Experts” blog</a> for insights from Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D., on how local leaders are working together to solve problems affecting community health.</p>