The Commonwealth Fund released the 2016 edition of The Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard on Local Health System Performance. The scorecard assesses the state of health care in more than 300 U.S. communities from 2011 through 2014, a period when the Affordable Care Act was being implemented across the country. In comparing health care access, quality, avoidable hospital use, costs of care, and health outcomes, the Scorecard shows that many U.S. communities experienced improvements: fewer uninsured residents, better quality of care in doctors’ offices and hospitals, more efficient use of hospitals, and fewer deaths from treatable cancers, among other gains. Still, the persistence of widespread differences between areas is a reminder that many local health systems have yet to reach the potential attained elsewhere in the country.
View scorecard: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives/2016/jul/local-scorecard/