New Reference Resource: California Regional Health Care Cost & Quality Atlas
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
Filed under: Data Files, News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.