Wisconsin’s overall health care performance dropped from seventh to eleventh place in the nation according to the most recent Commonwealth Fund Scorecard on State Health System Performance.
Wisconsin still ranks in the top quartile overall and is tied with Maine, but fell in ranking in some of the report’s subcategories. The report divided 42 different indicators — like hospital admissions for children with asthma — among five categories in order to break down each state’s rating. The categories are access and affordability, prevention and treatment, avoidable hospital use and cost, healthy lives and equity.
While Wisconsin held a top quartile rating for prevention and treatment, it fell to the second quartile for access and affordability, avoidable hospital use and cost and healthy lives. The state slipped to the third quartile for equity, ranking 29th in the country.
Wisconsin ranked in the second quartile when income was taken into account while it fell to the bottom quartile for race and ethnicity. While 64 out of every 100,000 white people died from 2012 to 2013, 160 out of every 100,000 black people died. This means the mortality rate for black Wisconsinites is more than two times higher than it is for white Wisconsinites.
Wisconsin’s neighbor, Minnesota, holds the number one spot in the healthy lives category while Wisconsin ranks 18th.
Wisconsin suicide deaths increased from 12.3 per 100,000 Wisconsinites in 2012 to 14.4 out of every 100,000 in 2013. From 2013 to 2014, the percent of Wisconsin smokers decreased by 1 percent.
The percentage of uninsured working-age adults declined by about 3 percent from 2013 to 2014 in Wisconsin.
Nationally, the number of deaths within 30 days of a hospital admission, diagnosis, infection or surgery decreased by 3.8 percent and represents many lives saved. Wisconsin ranked fourth in the prevention and treatment category.
Ranking 14th in the avoidable hospital use and costs of care category, Wisconsin’s rate of hospital readmissions sat below the national average of 30 percent.
