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State ranks 44th in nation for children's healthcare Friday, May 30, 2008 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Recent efforts to improve children's healthcare in Arkansas should help the state improve on its recent performance in a study that ranked Arkansas 44th nationally, an expert in the field said Thursday. Amy Rossi, associate director of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, says some aspects of the study relied on older data that didn't include recent initiatives and improvements. Some pieces of data weren't included at all, including smoking rates, which declined in Arkansas from 21 percent in 2000 to 8.9 percent in 2007, she said. The study, released this week by the Commonwealth fund, a private foundation that studies health issues and supports efforts to cover more people, focused on 13 performance indicators of healthcare access, quality, costs, equity and children's potential to lead healthy lives. "Across states, better access to care is closely associated with better quality of care," the study's authors said. The study found that Arkansas had the most affordable healthcare for children in the nation. Matt DeCample, spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, attributed the ranking to a decade of ARKids First, a state-funded health insurance program that provides two coverage options for more than 70,000 children who otherwise might have gone without healthcare coverage. "We're getting better but we can still do a lot better," DeCample said. The state's rankings were mixed in the other categories. Arkansas ranked 27th in access to healthcare, 42nd in quality, 46th in equity and 48th in potential to lead long, healthy lives. But because some aspects of the study relied on older data for purposes of comparison, Rossi said she thinks the state's doing better than the study indicated. "I think we're going to continue to move up," Rossi said. "It's hard for a poor state to make large advances, but we're certainly making headway." Rossi pointed to the annual Natural Wonders report, released for the first time last year, that makes a comprehensive analysis of the overall health of the state's children. The report highlighted strengths and weaknesses, shedding light on which parts of healthcare need the most work. The report found that Arkansas children's dental health was among the worst in the nation in part because of a shortage of dentists, and that the state's kids are more prone to obesity. Rossi also pointed out recent investments in early childhood education. "There's reason to be optimistic," said Glen Mays, chairman of the department of health policy and management in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Public Health. "There are also some very real problems that we face in Arkansas that the study points out - persistent problems that we really have yet to figure out how to make progress on." Arkansas ranks near last in the proportion of children who receive recommended immunizations and low in infant mortality rates. The study ranked Iowa first overall in terms of children's healthcare, while Oklahoma ranked 51st. |
