States get health care report card from Commonwealth Fund

There's a good article in the current Modern Healthcare (may require paid subscription) about the recent state-by-state analyses of cost, quality, and access from the Commonwealth Fund and (looking at quality alone) AHRQ. The Commonwealth Fund web site has a fabulous interactive map and lots of features as well as downloadable report, executive summary, PowerPoint chartpack, and data tables. AHRQ's site updates its annual State Snapshots data, based on 129 quality measures drawn from 30 sources (news release; States Snapshot site (including massive spreadsheet)).

Here are a few tidbits from the MH article:

• there are wide variations among states in the five dimensions;
• higher quality does not translate into higher costs;
• even in the “best” states, performance does not meet optimal standards;
• From the report: “If all states could approach the low levels of mortality from conditions amenable to care achieved by the top state, nearly 90,000 fewer deaths before the age of 75 would occur annually,” it said.
• Similarly, if all states reached the low levels of potentially preventable admissions and readmissions, hospitalizations could be reduced by 30% to 47% and save Medicare $2 billion to $5 billion each year.

I am not quite sure exactly how this is going to work, but I am considering using the Commonwealth Fund site for the first-day reading assignment in Health Law this fall, with period visits back to the site as we make our way through the themes of cost, quality, and access in the course.