Ohio Health Policy Review

New report compares states on 12 child well-being indicators

The Every Child Matters Education Fund has released a report, Geography Matters, that compares child well-being across states.  The Fund's website states that, "As the sorry numbers in this report show, a huge gap exists among states on a wide variety of child well-being indicators.  The state they live in should not adversely influence the life and death of children—but it does."

The report ranks states on 12 indicators.  According to the report, Ohio's performance varies among the indicators.  For instance, Ohio ranks as fourth best on the uninsured rate per child indicator and tenth on the births to women receiving late or no prental care.  Ohio performed worst on the child abuse fatalities (43rd), per capita child welfare expenditures (40th), and deaths of infants per 1,000 live births (36th) indicators.

Ohio 44th in federal public health funding per person

Ohio ranks 44th among states for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding per person (Source: "Ohio lags in CDC health money," Columbus Dispatch, April 3, 2008).  According to the Shortchanging America's Health 2008 report by Trust For America's Health, CDC funding per person ranged from $69.76 per person in Alaska to $13.61 per person in Kansas. 

Ohio received $15.08 per person in CDC funding, which is $2.15 less than the national average.  Only Utah, Minnesota, Florida, Indiana, and Kansas received less CDC funding per person than Ohio.  Overall, midwestern states received the least funding per person.

This report includes a review of other key health statistics, along with federal public health funding, for each state.  The report includes a summary page for Ohio that provides information on a range of key health facts, with lower rank scores indicating worse performance.

Ohio has fewer obstetricians than five years ago

"Five years after a law trying to reduce the malpractice rates went into effect, Ohio has fewer doctors who deliver babies than at the height of protests about high costs." (Source: "Ohio has falling insurance rates, fewer obstetricians," Associated Press, March 23, 2008.) "Ohio had 1,327 doctors listing obstetrics and gynecology as their primary specialty at the end of 2007, a 5 percent decrease from 2002, according to an AP analysis of State Medical Board numbers. The overall number of doctors in Ohio rose during the same time, from about 28,000 to about 30,000. Those figures represent all doctors and not just those in high-risk specialties."

The 2003 law passed by the Ohio General Assembly capped jury awards for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases at $350,000. Awards of up to $1 million were allowed in cases with multiple victims, which can include a mother and baby during birth. According to the Ohio State Medical Association, which supported the 2003 law, there are fewer obstetricians in the state because malpractice rates are still too high. Experts, though, say there are a "number of reasons why Ohio has fewer obstetricians, from rising medical costs of all kinds to the increasingly sophisticated technology used to deliver babies, which may be forcing old-style obstetricians to rethink the specialty."

Ohio hospitals, emergency rooms see large increase in visits

According to new information from the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA), there were more than 34 million inpatient and outpatient visits to Ohio hospitals in 2006, an increase of nearly 13% in the past five years. (Source: "Different Hospitals, Different Doorways, Constant Care," Health Beat, Feb. 28, 2008, Ohio Hospital Association.) Outpatient visits drove the increase, but 1.5 million visits were serious enough to require hospital admission (with Ohioans receiving inpatient hospital care for a total of 7.7 million days).

Hospital emergency departments are also saw an sharp increase in patients with 5.7 million visits in 2006. This represents a 13.6% increase over 2003. Of these visit to the emergency rooms in 2006, 933,000 were from patients without insurance coverage--even though only 8% of these uninsured patients had a serious enough medical condition to require an observation bed or admittance to the hospital. According to the OHA, this shows that hospital emergency departments are being used as a major source of general health care services for Ohio's uninsured, who have limited access to other sources of health care.

Survey by AARP Ohio examines Ohio attitudes toward health care reform

A new survey by AARP Ohio finds that health care reform is at the forefront of many Ohioans' minds. (Source: Ohio Health Care: A Study of Current Challenges and the Support for State Reform, AARP Ohio, Feb. 2008.) Key findings from the survey of 800 randomly selected Ohio residents ages 18-64, completed by Woelfel Research during December 2007, include:

• Almost seven in ten respondents believe that Ohio is either in a state of crises or has major problems with health care. While 19% of respondents were uninsured, 83% indicate it is extremely or very important that the state work to reduce the number of uninsured residents.
• One-third of respondents are not confident that they will be able to maintain their current level of health care coverage in the next five years, and seven in ten cite rising health care costs as a major problem for the state.
• Nine in ten respondents say it is extremely or very important for Ohio to make health care more affordable for all residents, and 82% strongly agree that all Ohioans should have access to affordable, quality health care coverage. Almost half of respondents identify ensuring affordable health care as the issue most important for the Governor and State Legislature to address.

Ohio Business Roundtable releases health care spending analysis

According to a "diagnostic" of Ohio's health care industry by the Ohio Business Roundtable, the state's health care system consumes about $89 billion a year and is growing at a rate of 6% to 9% annually. (Source: Gongwer Report, Jan. 28, 2008.) "That dollar amount, which accounts for all the money consumers, employers, and taxpayers spend on health care products and services, represents about 16% of Gross State Product." According to Business Roundtable President Richard Stoff, if left unchanged spending on health care in Ohio will grow to about $200 billion by 2018.

Report covers Ohio physician workforce data

The Association of American Medical Colleges has released its 2007 State Physician Workforce Data report (Note: PDF download). The report provides updated and expanded information on the active physician supply in each state, current medical school enrollment, physicians in graduate medical education programs, in-state retention rates, and more. The Ohio specific data finds that:

• Ohio ranks 17th among all states for active physicians per 100,000 population. In all, there were 28,904 active physicians in the state as of July 1, 2006, or 251.8 physicians per 100,000 people. (Source: State Physician Workforce Data, pages 5 and 6.)
• Ohio ranked 23rd for primary care physicians, with 10,244 total physicians practicing primary care or 89.2 physicians per 100,000 people. (Source: Ibid, page 10.)
• Ohio ranked 34th for the number of physicians who are 60 or older. 5,997 Ohio physicians, or 20.7% of all active physicians, are over age 60, while 6,026 or 20.8% are under age 40. (Souce: Ibid, page 16.)

State health facts for children

The Kaiser Family Foundation publishes a wonderful website call State Health Facts, which enables one to explore an individual state's health statistics and compare health indicators across different states. In a new update to the site, the Kaiser Foundation has added detailed children's health statistics. For example, the site's information on the health of children in Ohio includes the number and percent of children in the state who receive health coverage through employer-offered coverage and Medicaid; their demographic breakdown by race, ethnicity, poverty; their breakdown by heath status indicators, and much more. Anyone needing quick and accurate state-level statistics should bookmark this site.

Ohio ranked as one of the "most depressed" states in U.S.

In a new report released today, Mental Health America says Ohio is one of the "most depressed" states in the country. (Source: press release, Nov. 29, 2007.) The report examined state and national data on mental health status and suicide rates and found that South Dakota leads the nation with the best depression status while Utah ranked last. Ohio came in at number 43. (Source: Ranking America's Mental Health: An Analysis of Depression Across the States.)

To determine the measures of depression and mental health status across the different states, the report's authors examined the percentage of adult and adolescent populations experiencing at least one major depressive episode in the past year, the percentage of the adult population experiencing serious psychological distress, and the average number of days per month in which the population reported that their mental health was not good. The report also examines suicide rates across the country, with Ohio ranking in the middle at number 22.

Survey: Ohio poverty rate increases; fewer poor residents have insurance or report excellent health status

The percentage of Ohioans below 100% of the federal poverty guidelines (FPG) has increased slightly since 2005, while the number of residents living above 200% FPG has decreased. (Source: "Ohioans' Experiences with Poverty," 2007 Ohio Health Issues Poll.) In 2007, 16% of Ohioans lived at 100% FPG, up from 14% in 2005. Those above 200% FPG fell from 65% in 2005 to 62% in 2007. The survey, conducted through the University of Cincinnati Institute for Policy Research's Ohio Poll for the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, also found that 39% of Ohioans below 100% of poverty are uninsured, an uninsured rate more than twice that of Ohioans in higher income groups. Only 16% of Ohioans between 100 and 200% FPG lack health insurance, compared with 7% of Ohioans above 200% of poverty. In 2006, 100% of the FPG for a family of four was $20,000.

The survey also examined the health status of Ohioans by income level. Those "living below 100% FPG reported poorer health status than those living between 100-200% FPG and those living above 200% FPG. Since 2005, the percentage of Ohioans living below 100% FPG who report excellent or very good health status has steadily decreased" to 21% of respondents, while the percentage who report fair or poor health status has increased to 79%. Other information in the report includes survey results comparing poverty with gender, race, age, education, geographic region,  employment status, and more.