COVID-19 responses: 11 top performing states

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Here are the top 11 states, ranked for their response to COVID-19, with additional rankings in other categories, as measured by The Commonwealth Fund.

The nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that promotes high-performing health care systems, published its “2022 Scorecard on State Health System Performance: How did states do during the COVID-19 pandemic?”

The annual review of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., grades health care quality, service use and cost, disparities, and outcomes across 56 measures. The scorecard examines access to health care and if Americans are “getting the right health care, at the right time, and in the right setting.” Another question: “How healthy is America?”

The 2022 scorecard added a new line of inquiry: “How well has each state responded to and managed the COVID-19 pandemic?”

“COVID-19 took a huge toll on Americans’ health, directly and indirectly, but that toll varied dramatically by state,” the report said. “The pandemic’s impact reverberated throughout the health system in every state, as health care use fell and deaths from drug overdoses and treatable causes rose.”

The results are in.

“We found that states that have historically performed well on our State Scorecard also performed well as the pandemic unfolded, both on our usual set of health system measures and the new COVID-19-specific measures,” the report said.