Nebraska ranked 9th for health care openness and access

To see the study – click here.

To see the details on Nebraska – click here.

The Mercatus Center has pre-released its Healthcare Openness and Access Project (HOAP).  This index measures the extent to which states leave patients, providers, and businesses free to seek or provide healthcare as they deem best. Each state is evaluated on 41 different indicators, receiving a score of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) for each indicator. These 41 indicators are grouped into 5 categories. A state’s category score is the average of all the indicators in that category. A state’s overall score is the average of the five category scores. Finally, the states are ranked by their overall scores.

The HOAP index ranks Nebraska near the top of the 51 jurisdictions analyzed. Some of the state’s highest scores are in the Institutional Regulation category and the Delivery Regulation category, and some of its lowest are in the Professional Regulation category and the Patient Regulation category.

• Professional Regulation Category – A higher score indicates that healthcare professionals have easier access to licensure and greater flexibility with regard to employment in the healthcare sector. NE Score: 3.60 (US mean: 3.14, median: 3.00), Rank: 9
• Institutional Regulation Category – A higher score indicates that healthcare institutions such as hospitals, payers, and pharmacies have greater flexibility to determine their business operations. NE Score: 3.83 (US mean: 2.96, median: 3.17), Rank: 4
• Patient Regulation Category – A higher score indicates that patients have easier access to certain types of drugs and harm-reducing substances and that they enjoy other protections. NE Score: 2.50 (US mean: 3.10, median: 3.00), Rank: 43
• Payment Regulation Category – A higher score indicates that patients, insurers, and others have greater flexibility to determine the structure and pricing of health insurance policies and that individuals face a lower burden of taxation for certain healthcare services and devices. NE Score: 3.78 (US mean: 3.47, median: 3.56), Rank: 9
• Delivery Regulation Category – A higher score indicates that the state’s environment is more conducive to the establishment of new technologies and business arrangements that affect the delivery of care, including telemedicine and direct primary care (DPC) practices. NE Score: 4.20 (US mean: 3.70, median: 3.60), Rank: 4