Health and Healthcare

This Is The Worst American State For Healthcare

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: March 19, 2022 9:53 am

There are 920,000 hospital beds in America. Most people don’t have to use them. However, 145 million Americans go to emergency rooms each year, which is where a large percentage of U.S. residents get their only medical treatment.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed American healthcare radically. Large numbers of doctors retired or were driven out of business because they could not see patients due to concern about infection. Hospitals where doctors performed important procedures to help people with serious diseases like heart problems and cancer, had to turn people away because beds were used for COVID-19 patients. Some nurses left their profession. Others came out of retirement because of the overwhelming need for healthcare staff due to the spread of the virus.

The financial situations of many patients and their families changed as well. Treatment for COVID-19 that involved hospitalization could cost tens of thousands of dollars. Some people’s finances buckled under that financial strain.

Healthcare varies from country to country, state to state, and city to city. Healthcare Transformers recently released a study titled “Healthcare hotspots in the USA”. The decision for how states were ranked depending on the number of hospitals in each state, residents per hospital, staff per hospital bed, number of discharges, number of patient days, gross patient revenue, patient satisfaction survey results, dentists per 100,000 people, infant mortality, maternal mortality, life expectancy at birth, and annual healthcare spending per capita.

Each state could receive a maximum score of 100. The state with the worst healthcare was Delaware with a score of 31.4, followed by Georgia at 32.5, and Arkansas at 33.8.

The state with the best score was New York at 58.9. The other top states were in the northeast. Connecticut, in second place, received a score of 58.3, followed by Pennsylvania at 57.4, and Massachusetts at 56.1. Interestingly, states with low populations also did well. North Dakota ranked sixth with a score of 55.0, followed by South Dakota with a score of 54.9.

Click here to read States With the Worst Hospital Workforce Shortages