Health care costs are an important measure of the efficiency of a health care system. Health care costs are the price-adjusted Medicare reimbursements (Parts A and B) per enrollee. However, in order to rank a measure, an ideal value must be known. Research shows that ‘too little’ or ‘too much’ health care spending is not good for health care outcomes. However, it is not yet known what the ‘ideal’ level of spending on patients should be.

Profile Measure Data Source: University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, 2017 County Health Rankings

Preventable hospital stays is the hospital discharge rate for ambulatory care-sensitive conditions per 1,000 fee-for-service Medicare enrollees. Ambulatory care-sensitive conditions include: convulsions, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bacterial pneumonia, asthma, congestive heart failure, hypertension, angina, cellulitis, diabetes, gastroenteritis, kidney/urinary infection, and dehydration. Hospitalization for diagnoses treatable in outpatient services suggests that the quality of care provided in the outpatient setting was less than ideal. The measure may also represent a tendency to overuse hospitals as a main source of care.

Profile Measure Data Source: University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, 2017 County Health Rankings

People in rural Arkansas have greater difficulty getting the health care they need compared to those who live in the non-rural counties.  One reason they have difficulty getting health care is because of the cost; in general, 15.3 percent of Arkansans report that they were not able to see a doctor in the past 12 months due to the cost, compared to 13 percent in the U.S.   However, in many rural counties, more than 20 percent of residents were not able to see a doctor due to cost.  Lack of health insurance makes the cost of seeing a doctor hard, if not impossible to afford. In Arkansas 25 percent of working-age adults have no health insurance. In many rural counties it is even higher.