Government Healthcare Policy, Business and Technology

Health in America: Improving, but disparities need policy prescriptions

Healthcare IT News: The bad news: mortality rates haven’t improved much and obesity rates rose in one-third of communities. The good news: public health gains can be made in resource-poor communities with the right health policies, based on research from The Commonwealth Fund, Rising to the Challenge, the Fund’s Scorecard on local health system performance for 2016.

The top-line of this benchmark report is that health care in the U.S. has, overall, improved more than it’s declined. Among the big levers driving health care improvement in the past year have been the further expansion of health citizens covered with insurance through the Affordable Care Act, more people getting needed care and a lower-percentage of people self-rationing due to cost, fewer hospital readmission said, and higher-quality care.

Read article