‘Mortality amenable to health care’ is a specifically defined composite
measure of deaths before age 75 from complications of conditions that
might be avoided by timely effective care and prevention.1 The concept
originated in the 1970s when Rutstein et al ‘selected conditions in which
critical increases in rates of disease, disability, or untimely death could
serve as indexes of the quality of care’.2 Nolte and McKee, in developing
the statistic ‘mortality amenable to health care’ or ‘amenable mortality’,
have limited the data to deaths and updated the conditions included.
They have used the statistic to assess the performance of health systems
and track changes over time across advanced industrialized countries.1,3
Their comparisons of amenable mortality among 19 Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries over two
time periods have found that the United States (US) failed to keep pace
with rates of decline in amenable mortality rates in other countries –
falling to last place as of 2002–2003.
Lagging rates of improvement in the US may reflect a variety of
influences on the amenable mortality statistic. These could include
demographic factors influencing the rates and also health system
performance factors. One recent article has shown that there appear to
be complex relationships between factors such as state political cultures
and cultural differences and both the total and amenable mortality of
African Americans and American Indians.4 This adds to an already
extensive literature on the relationship of total mortality in the US and
factors such as race and income inequality. Another recent article has
reviewed this subject and shown an interaction between race and
income inequality that is modified in metropolitan areas by racial
segregation.5 Alternatively, or in addition, the amenable mortality
statistic may have a relationship with some of the well-documented
US health-care system performance deficits including a high rate of
uninsured and a fragmented delivery system with relatively weak primary
care and poor coordination of care between providers and sites.
These types of relationships have not been explored in the past.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA)
importantly begins to address a number of US health system issues,
particularly coverage for the uninsured, but differences in local health
systems and state policies are likely to matter a great deal. In fact,
variation in mortality amenable to health care across the US statesexceeds variation among OECD countries, several of which have
universal coverage, underscoring that for states to address the interstate
differences they will have to go beyond their roles in implementing the
coverage provisions of the PPACA.
To provide insight to governments and all involved in providing
health care to populations and individuals, this study examines variation
of mortality amenable to health care across the US and assesses the
extent to which variations in state rates are associated with two key
socio-demographic characteristics, poverty and race, and then, controlling
for those characteristics, with a variety of health-systems indicators.