A new infographic featuring Health Care Quality and Prevention insights from the Community Dashboard shows that statewide, more Coloradans are getting the care they need to stay healthy compared to previous years. While improvements have been made, areas of opportunity still exist, especially with cancer screening rates and primary care visits for kids and adults.
This initial look at quality and prevention focuses on statewide data across all payers in the Colorado All Payer Claims Database and supplements a recently released Cost of Care infographic. By visiting the Community Dashboard page, communities and organizations can dive deeper into the data by health insurance coverage type, region, age, gender and other factors, which can help identify health inequities.
According to the statewide data across all payers, in 2021, 62% of women received a breast cancer screening as recommended, up from 60% in 2014. Cervical cancer screenings had a higher percent change (16%) from 2013-2021. However, in 2021, only 55% of Colorado women actually received a cervical cancer screening as recommended.
There was a slight decrease in the percent of kids having a visit with a primary care provider between 2013 (82%) and 2021 (78%). The percentage of adults receiving a primary care visit was lower overall, but did increase slightly from 75% to 77%.
Care for people with diabetes also improved during the timeframe analyzed. In 2021, 84% of people with diabetes received an HbA1c test as recommended, which helps providers and patients better manage blood sugar levels. This is an increase from 2013 when only 78% of people with diabetes received the test.
People who visit the Emergency Department (ED) for a mental-health related reason should ideally have a follow-up visit with a provider within 7 to 30 days. The data shows that 59% of Coloradans followed up within 7 days, and 73% followed up with a provider within 30 days in 2021. These are significant increases over the percent of people who followed up in 2013 (36% within 7 days, and 49% within 30 days).
The Community Dashboard is a tool CIVHC offers as part of our mission and focus on offering community-level data to help support advancing access to high quality, equitable, and affordable health care services. For more information and to view the data, methodology and additional infographics, visit the Community Dashboard.