The Best Place In America To Retire If You Are Sick
We’ve all seen those best- places-to-retire lists. Inevitably, they are based on low taxes, good weather, or lots of activities. But how about this metric: Where will you get the best care if you are old and frail?
Hint: Oregon is good. Rural Louisiana is not.
The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, which has access to an enormous amount of Medicare data, has mapped the quality of local health care for older adults throughout the country and created a useful scorecard. Where are you most likely to be hospitalized, or be readmitted to the hospital, or get useless tests or dangerous drugs? Where will you spend those most time seeing doctors? The study is based on 2012 Medicare data.
It turns out that there is enormous variation across the country in the way older adults get medical care, and some troubling patterns across these different measures. There are some parts of the country where older adults are likely to get good care. And there are others where it is likely to be downright dangerous.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2016/02/17/where-is-the-best-place-in-america-to-retire-if-you-are-sick/#67535b5649ac
Hint: Oregon is good. Rural Louisiana is not.
It turns out that there is enormous variation across the country in the way older adults get medical care, and some troubling patterns across these different measures. There are some parts of the country where older adults are likely to get good care. And there are others where it is likely to be downright dangerous.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2016/02/17/where-is-the-best-place-in-america-to-retire-if-you-are-sick/#67535b5649ac