Health System in Minnesota Rated 11th Best in U.S.
A new government report ranked the health care system in Minnesota 11th best overall out of 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality compiled the report, the 2016 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, using more than 250 different measures in three areas—access, cost and quality—from a variety of state and federal health care agencies.
AHRQ used 148 of the 250 measures to rank the overall performance health care systems in each state. Minnesota was better than the average for all states and the District of Columbia on 70 measures, the same as the average on 40 measures and worse than the average on 38 measures. The net result placed the state 11th on list.
The top-ranked state was neighboring Wisconsin. Border states North Dakota and Iowa made the top 10 at 5th and 6th, respectively. Last on the list was Alaska.
In addition to the report, AHRQ created an interactive online database that allows users to search for state-level data on all measures the agency used to calculate the rankings. The AHRQ site also offers profiles of each state.
The agency’s profile for Minnesota identified the state’s five strongest and weakest areas of performance in terms of health care access, cost and quality. The state performed best on:
- Adults who had a doctor's office or clinic visit in the last six months whose health providers sometimes or never explained things in a way they could understand (Medicaid)
- Dialysis patients who were registered on a waiting list for transplantation
- Adults who had a doctor's office or clinic visit in the last 12 months whose health providers sometimes or never spent enough time with them (Medicare fee-for-service)
- Adults who had a doctor's office or clinic visit in the last 12 months whose health providers sometimes or never showed respect for what they had to say (Medicare fee-for-service)
- Adults who had a doctor's office or clinic visit in the last six months whose health providers sometimes or never spent enough time with them (Medicaid)
The state performed worst on:
- Short-stay nursing home residents with moderate to severe pain
- Long-stay nursing home patients who had fall with major injury
- Long-stay nursing home residents with moderate to severe pain
- Long-stay nursing home residents whose depression or anxiety increased
- Hospital admissions for immunization-preventable influenza per 100,000 population age 65 and over
The data “demonstrate significant progress in some areas and identify other areas that merit more attention where wide variations persist,” AHRQ said in its report.
