Dive Brief:
- Health research website HealthGrove has announced it used data from the Kaiser Family Foundation to do a nationwide analysis of healthcare access by looking at factors including physician and dentist density, what percentage of the population is insured, what percentage of mental health needs have been met, and how many staffed hospital beds exist per capita.
- The researchers continued onward with the 25 worst states, by using data from the Health Indicators Warehouse, the U.S. Census, and CMS to designate each state a Health Care Access Score.
- The analysis also provided a score for each county (of those that were reporting data) in every state.
Dive Insight:
The analysis provides further evidence of the age-old issue of rural areas having less healthcare access -- which was supposed to be aided by Medicaid expansion, HealthGrove notes.
It blames the Supreme Court for passing its 2012 ruling Medicaid expansion would be voluntary for states, and adds of the 25 worst states for health care access, 14 have not expanded Medicaid. "Even so," the researchers write, "this does not mean that mandated Medicaid expansion in all states would have fixed the disparities in healthcare access."
They also add that although most of the 25 worst states on this list are conservative and rural, there were some liberal states on the list as well, including Oregon, ranked as the 11th worst state.
HealthGrove names these the 25 worst states for healthcare access, beginning with the lowest/worst score:
- Georgia
- Texas
- Idaho
- Oklahoma
- New Mexico
- Montana
- Arizona
- Alaska
- Nevada
- Indiana
- Oregon
- Utah
- South Carolina
- North Carolina
- Florida
- Wisconsin
- Delaware
- Arkansas
- Kansas
- Vermont
- South Dakota
- Wyoming
- Maine
- Alabama
- Louisiana