EMPLOYER-SPONSORED HEALTH PLAN STATS

Health insurance coverage for wage and salary workers tends to vary by industry, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), which reports that local, state and federal governments are more likely than private sector employers to offer employees health insurance.

Specifically, almost 97 percent of government employees report that their employer sponsors a health plan compared to nearly 89 percent of workers in manufacturing, 80 percent of workers in trade industries and 71 percent of workers in the service sector.

HOW DOES YOUR STATE'S HEALTH SYSTEM RATE?

When it comes to healthcare, cost is not a measurement of quality; but there is a correlation between access to care—namely health insurance coverage—and the quality of it.

These are some of the conclusions reached in Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance, issued in June by The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.

New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Wisconsin and North Dakota are among the 13 states with best overall performance rankings.

California, Florida, Kentucky and Nevada are among the poorest performing.

The analysis is based on five dimensions of performance: access, quality, avoidable hospital use and costs, equity and healthy lives.

Among the bottom-line conclusions: “All states have substantial room to improve.”

The state scorecard follows The Commwealth Fund’s September 2006 release of a national scorecard.

The United States ranks 15th out of 19 countries in deaths potentially preventable with excellent medical care, according to Why Not the Best? Results from a National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance.

The scorecards are available at www.commonwealthfund.org.

'STATE OF THE HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE 2007'

Research has linked nurse staffing levels with patient outcomes. It’s no wonder then that AFT Healthcare is working hard at the state and federal levels to establish nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

Research sponsored by AFT Healthcare shows that while most nurses believe they can safely care for five patients at a time, the average number they are being asked to care for is eight and often more.