Ranking of US states based on healthcare quality.

A new report from the Commonwealth Fund ranked all 50 US states and Washington, D.C. based on their overall quality of health care, with the top five states being Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, while the bottom five states included Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Texas, and Arkansas. The report used metrics including health care access and affordability, preventive care and treatment, potentially avoidable hospital use and cost, healthy lives, reproductive care and women’s health, income disparity, and racial and ethnic health equity. The report also highlighted the impact of the pandemic on mental health and the need for greater investments in the behavioral health workforce, behavioral health integration in primary care, and treatment for substance use disorders at the national level.