Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1475102
21 PATIENT SAFETY & OUTCOMES The best and worst states for healthcare during COVID-19 By Molly Gamble T he Commonwealth Fund released its 2022 Scorecard on State Health System Performance June 16, which was modified from previous years to factor each state's response and management of the COVID-19 pandemic into its grade. e Commonwealth Fund evaluated states on 56 performance measures grouped into seven dimensions: (1) access and affordability, (2) prevention and treatment, (3) avoidable hospital use and cost, (4) healthy lives, (5) COVID-19, (6) income disparity and (7) racial and ethnic equity. e report generally reflects data from 2020, although seven new measures tied to COVID-19 incorporate data through the first quarter of 2022. Some insights into the rankings and scores: • Hawaii ranked No. 1 for its COVID-19 response and manage- ment, helping its overall No. 1 ranking. • Alabama ranked No. 51 for its COVID-19 response and manage- ment, moving down its overall ranking to No. 46. • Utah ranked No. 1 for avoidable hospital use and cost; West Vir- ginia ranked No. 51. • Massachusetts ranked No. 2 overall, but it led the country for four dimensions: access and affordability; prevention and treatment; healthy lives and racial and ethnic equity. Below is each state and its overall ranking, which includes ties. 1. Hawaii 2. Massachusetts 3. Connecticut 4. Washington 5. Vermont 6. Rhode Island 7. Maryland 8. New Hampshire 9. Minnesota 10. New York 11. California 12. Colorado 13. District of Columbia 14. Pennsylvania *Oregon *Maine 17. Iowa 18. New Jersey 19. Utah 20. Virginia 21. Wisconsin 22. Nebraska *Illinois 24. Michigan 25. Idaho 26. New Mexico 27. Delaware 28. Montana 29. North Dakota 30. South Dakota *Alaska 32. Arizona 33. Ohio 34. North Carolina 35. Kansas 36. Florida 37. South Carolina *Indiana 39. Louisiana 40. Tennessee 41. Wyoming *Nevada *Kentucky 44. Georgia *Arkansas 46. Alabama 47. Missouri 48. Texas 49. West Virginia 50. Oklahoma 51. Mississippi n Why physicians may prescribe more drugs on colder days By Erica Carbajal T he temperature on the day of a blood test can affect certain results, such as cholesterol levels. These effects can play a large role in physicians' treatment decisions, according to researchers at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In a April 5 interview with the Chicago Booth Review, Devin Pope, PhD, a behavioral economist, described research he and his colleagues conducted using a data set with information on about 5 million patients and the blood tests they've gotten across a several-year period. They found cholesterol levels on a warm day can look better than on a really cold day. "You're about 5 percent less likely to be prescribed statins or cholesterol medication if your blood was tested on a warm day than if it was tested on a cold day," Dr. Pope said in the interview. "The effects [on the test results] are large enough to actually impact the type of medication you might be prescribed, and this suggests that we should be thinking about the weather on the time of these blood tests and whether or not a correction might be necessary." He also described a related research project that looked at data on how physicians treat patients with a blood test result that is right below a guideline versus right above a guideline. When looking at results from patients who had a test done to measure their prostate-specific antigen level, for example, they found patients with a PSA level just above the guideline "could be two to three times more likely to have a biopsy done, to have a prostatectomy done, to be retested," compared to those right below the guideline. n