A new online tool made public Wednesday aims to quantify those variations to help policymakers and health care providers improve the health of Californians.
The California Regional Health Care Cost & Quality Atlas crunches 2013 data on medical care provided to about 24 million people — some two-thirds of the state’s population. It also includes information on care afforded by different types of coverage, including commercial health insurance, Medicare Advantage and Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program for the poor.
Among the findings:
- Orange County has the highest breast cancer screening rate among Medi-Cal managed care enrollees, at 66.4 percent. The lowest screening rate for that group of patients, in the Greater Fresno area, is 44.2 percent.
- If all commercially insured Californians received the same quality of care offered in top-performing regions, nearly 200,000 more people would have been screened for colorectal cancer and 50,000 more women would have been screened for breast cancer.
- Northern California tends to outperform Central and Southern California in quality of care for cancer, diabetes and asthma.
- The lowest performing region for health care quality covers Mono and Inyo counties in Central California; the highest is Contra Costa County.
Direct to The California Regional Health Care Cost & Quality Atlas
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