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FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT CITES RHODE ISLAND

AS ‘SUCCESS STORY’ IN CHILDREN’S HEALTH CARE

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, singles out Rhode Island as being exceptionally successful in its approaches to children’s health care issues. The report appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

Currently, a larger percentage of Rhode Island’s children are insured than in any other state; with only about 5 percent left uncovered. It also has the best record in the country at providing women with prenatal care. One of the state’s major achievements has been to narrow the gap in infant mortality between high-income and low-income families. In the 1990s, the infant mortality rate for children receiving public health coverage in Rhode Island dropped by 36 percent.

One of the keys to Rhode Island’s success has been an organizational structure in which a “Children’s Cabinet” crosses departmental boundaries, permitting various agencies that are involved in working with young people in the state to work together effectively. The state also relies heavily on managed care for meeting children’s health care needs. It has dealt with patient advocates’ concerns about managed care by establishing a consumer advisory committee that helped to establish safeguards to protect the interests of the state’s youngest citizens. Rhode Island also uses clear performance measures to make sure that the managed care organizations with which it contracts are delivering services at a high level.

“In all our reporting about health care in America, it became clear that not only is a high level of care for young people worthwhile on a humanitarian level, it is also fiscally sensible,” says Richard Greene, co-author of the report. “The fact is that much of the care provided for children is preventive in nature, and has the potential of saving loads of money down the line. Rhode Island has really focused on lead screening, for example, and now about 79 percent of physicians in the state perform the appropriate tests. That’s four times the national average.”

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ health care system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded--it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis. It is a fiscal crisis.”

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29. Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

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