First-Ever Local Area Health System Scorecard Reveals Stark Differences Across U.S.
<p>Health care 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 health care system available to residents, according to the first-ever local <a href="/publications/fund-reports/2012/mar/rising-challenge-results-scorecard-local-health-system">health system scorecard</a>, released today by The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.<br /><br />
The report,<em> Rising to the Challenge: Results from a Scorecard on Local Health System Performance, 2012</em>, measures how 306 local U.S. areas are doing on key health care indicators such as insurance coverage, preventive care, mortality rates, potentially avoidable hospital use, and costs. It finds significant differences between leading and lagging localities, and wide disparities among major cities on many key measures of health care system performance. An <a href="/~/media/23f0c812ea36482baaa00ca98bc4688b.ashx">interactive map</a> accompanying the report allows comparison of cities and communities across the U.S.<br />
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Join the conversation on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/commonwealthfnd" target="_blank">Twitter</a> about the new local scorecard by using the hashtag #localhealth.</p>
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