Midwest Health Initiative (MHI), a regional health improvement collaborative, has recently released its 2023 community scorecard, which summarizes measures of population health, health care utilization, and cost for services provided to commercially insured St. Louisans in 2022. Published annually, this resource aids community leaders in identifying areas of focus for health improvement of the population and serves to track trends in population health over time.
At the request of a St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition employer member, MHI explored cancer prevalence in its claims dataset to help employers benchmark cancer rates among their employee population. Based on positive feedback, there is now a Cancer Prevalence section included in the scorecard. In addition to tracking total cancer prevalence, this section also includes prevalence for skin, breast, and lung cancer. Skin cancer is highest among these three at 0.56% in 2022, which is down from 0.76% in 2019. Although MHI’s dataset suggests a declining trend in prevalence for all three cancer types, this may be due to fewer people receiving screening and, therefore, being diagnosed. Check here for the American Cancer Society’s guidelines for early detection of cancer.
An additional metric stemmed from a recent Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America report that identified St. Louis as the top city in the United States for asthma-related deaths. The asthma medication ratio is a quality metric used to assess the number of patients with asthma that use a controller medication more than other asthma medications, such as a rescue inhaler. A higher value indicates that more of the population has well-controlled asthma based on medication use. In 2022, 4.8% of the commercially insured population in St. Louis was treated for Asthma or COPD. Of those with asthma, 83.9% used a controller medication more often than another asthma medication. This percent has increased slightly from 81.2% in 2019. Even if you or a loved one regularly fills their controller inhaler prescription, that does not mean the inhaler is being used correctly. To ensure effective delivery of the medication, correct asthma device use is necessary. Review the steps for using a variety of asthma devices here.
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