OCR Text |
Show Health Care Costs, Access, and Quality The effectiveness of health care is often evaluated in terms of costs, access, and quality. An ideal health care system would be one in which costs were low, care accessable, and quality remained high. However, in reality trade-offs inevitably occur. The three areas are closely linked; changes to one area can impact the other two. Policy considerations that focus on one (cost, for example) must consider potential effects on the others (access and quality). For this reason, it would be helpful to be able to measure the three. At present, there are readily available measures of health care costs and access. Measuring quality remains more elusive; it is difficult to quantify. Data in this section include total and per capita personal health care expenditures. The average annual rate of increase in personal health care expenditures has been falling since the early 1980s. However, health care spending as a percentage of per capita income has increased for Utahns during the same time. Increases in health care spending continue to outpace inflation. Several hospital measures follow the cost data. Utah appears to fare better than the U.S. in these measures. This may reflect differences in practice patterns, cost containment measures, and/or Utah's generally younger, healthier population. Access to health care is an issue for all states but particularly for Utah, given its rural and frontier character. Most of the 29 counties in the state have been identified as health professional shortage areas, designating areas that have too few health care providers for a given population. As in other mountain states, recruiting and retaining providers for outlying areas remains a challenge. Sources for this section can be found on pp. 129-130 of the Review. Utah's Health: An Annual Review 1995 107 |