Chicago Among US Leaders In Getting Health Care Right

CHICAGO — A new report has ranked Chicago the 54th best city in the country for health care. Healthgrades, which helps consumers find and schedule appointments with health care providers, on Tuesday released its 2019 National Health Index, which aims to evaluate which cities are getting health care right.

The cities were ranked based on four categories: access to care, population health, hospital quality and local specialists. Chicago, according to the authors, ranked 66th in the country for access and 65th for population health. The study said the city also ranked 54th for hospital quality and 48th for local specialists.

Chicago is one of 100 cities to make Healthgrades' list, and it's the only one in Illinois. Among large cities — those with populations of at least 1 million people — the Chicago metro area ranks 28th.

The city doing health care the best is Rochester, Minnesota. The authors called Rochester, which has a population of just more than 218,000, a “small town with a big presence for quality health care.” The city that is home to the Mayo Clinic earned the highest ranking in both hospital quality and local specialists. Nearly half of its hospitals have 5-star ratings for multiple procedures and conditions, while residents maintain a normal weight and exercise regularly.

Here are the top 10 cities, according to Healthgrades:

1. Rochester, Minnesota
2. Burlington, Vermont
3. Charleston, South Carolina
4. Cincinnati, Ohio
5. Baltimore, Maryland
6. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
7. Gainesville, Florida
8. Hartford, Connecticut
9. San Jose, California
10. Cleveland, Ohio

The index found that San Francisco was the healthiest of all cities on the list, and Worcester, Massachusetts, ranked highest in access to health care.

The index looked at more than a dozen variables and grouped them into four health care categories:

1. Whether the residents of each city were healthy overall
2. If consumers had access to health care
3. If local specialists achieved high marks in patient satisfaction and physician count per capita
4. If patients had access to high-quality hospitals.

The last category is based on Healthgrades’ own hospital quality analysis.

Dr. Archelle Georgiou, senior adviser to Healthgrades, said in a release that it’s not easy to judge whether a city is getting health care right. For this reason, numerous industry data sets were used to help paint a more complete picture of health care at the local level.

“The National Health Index is designed to help consumers understand the health of their community, to empower them to navigate their care journey with confidence and to help them access the right care in their market,” said Georgiou.

The index is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provider specialty information and patient experience survey scores, the U.S. Census Bureau and Healthgrades 2019 award year hospital quality ratings.

Go the Healthgrades website for its 2019 National Health Index for the complete list of city rankings.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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