MS health performance was worst

Mississippi’s health system performance has been deemed the worst in the country. 

A comprehensive annual report from the Commonwealth Fund, a private health care research foundation, ranked Mississippi as one of the worst states for a number of health categories, including reproductive and women’s health and racial health equity, based on the most recent available data from 2021. 

The fund has consistently found stark health disparities in Mississippi and ranked the state near the bottom or last for a number of measures used to evaluate health system performance. 

The results hardly come as a shock to Dr. Daniel Edney, Mississippi’s state health officer. “If we had 60 states, we’d be 60th in health,” he said, "but it doesn’t have to be us.”

Within the state’s health care system ranking, some of the worst categories are the pre-term birth and infant mortality rates, breast and cervical cancer deaths and premature deaths. 

The latter is a category that worsened since 2022's report, and the fund connects the rise to the COVID-19 pandemic.

People of color experienced the steepest declines. Mississippi’s avoidable death rate surged more than 35 percent between 2019 and 2021.

The scorecard for the first-time included measures to evaluate state reproductive care and women’s health performance, and the results showed women struggled nationally to receive adequate health care. Those difficulties were pronounced in Mississippi. The only state with worse outcomes was New Mexico. 

Mortality rates for women of reproductive age generally increased across all states, especially among American Indian/Alaska Native and Black women. Mississippi’s maternal mortality rate between 2019 and 2021 was the highest with 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births. 

The report said many of the deaths could be attributed to inequitable access to comprehensive health care and racial and ethnic disparities in quality of care, even at the same hospitals.

Mississippi ranked at the bottom when considering health care access and affordability. (Mississippi Today 06/22/23) Mississippi health rankings worst in U.S., report finds - Mississippi Today