Florida Rankings - Health

This year two institutions, the United Health Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund conducted state by state analysis of our health and healthcare system. The results indicate that Florida isn't doing as well as it should.

On November 5th, the United Health Foundation issued its 18th annual America's Health Rankings report comparing Americans' health, state by state. On page 48 of the report, you'll find the results for Florida.

Florida ranked 41 this year, unchanged from last year.

STRENGTHS:
Strengths include a low rate of cancer deaths at 191.8 deaths per 100,000 population, a low prevalence of obesity at 23.1 percent of the population and a low prevalence of binge drinking at 13.7 percent of the population.

CHALLENGES:
Challenges include a high incidence of infectious disease at 41.0 cases per 100,000 population, a high rate of uninsured population at 21.2 percent and a high violent crime rate at 712 offenses per 100,000 population. Florida ranks lower for health determinants than for health outcomes, indicating that overall healthiness may decline over time.

Back in June, the Commonwealth Fund ranked the healthcare performance of all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia with the release of its report - Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance.

Florida scored a ranking of 43. See the Florida Scorecard tables.

Business Week recently did its own comparison based on the data from both the UHF and Commonwealth reports. In their table of U.S. State Health Systems Compared they also gave Florida an overall rank of 43.