Introduction
The Dartmouth Atlas is a very useful tool that gives one an idea of how the health care systems in the states are organized. The tool is so organized that it provides room for the comparison of medical systems between states. The Dartmouth Atlas is fun and easy to navigate (Kenen, 2013). This paper seeks to identify the various tools in the Dartmouth Atlas that can be useful to the state of Pennsylvania and their relevance to the state.
Various Useful Tools within the Dartmouth Atlas
According to the Dartmouth Atlas (2015), one can find useful information on health care, such as regional data, data on individual hospitals, various current topics on health care, and publications on health care, as well as critical issues that are related to health care in the United States. One such tool is the “Hospital Care Intensity”. This tool gives information on the locations of different hospitals throughout America (Dartmouth Atlas, 2015). For example, someone can identify the number of hospitals in the state of Pennsylvania and locate the nearest hospital. The fact that one can find the nearest hospital in the shortest time makes this health care atlas more useful to the residents of Pennsylvania, as many lives can be saved in case there are emergencies.
The tab that gives data based on regions leads to the general information about health care in particular states. For example, the tab provides information about patients who enrolled for health care in Pennsylvania in the year 2012 (Dartmouth Atlas, 2015). From the data available, one can argue that only a few of black Americans enrolled in Medicare in the state. This data can be used to start campaigns to sensitize the black Americans in Pennsylvania to enroll in Medicare, either for screening or treatment purposes. The tab on “Data by Region” also gives the amount of reimbursements per enrollee in a particular year (Dartmouth Atlas, 2015). The information can be used by various human rights groups to gauge whether the state’s leadership is doing enough in terms of reimbursements in comparison to the amount distributed by the central government and the amount reimbursed to other states. The leadership that governs Pennsylvania can use the information on the number of hospital discharges to either increase the capacity of the various hospitals with fewer discharges or increase the number of nurses so that each nurse attends to a manageable number of patients.
One can also use this website to know the number of deaths that occurred in a particular state in a given year. For example, about 15 percent of deaths occurred in the ICU in Pennsylvania’s hospitals (Dartmouth Atlas, 2015). The number of fatalities can be reduced by installing modern equipment that can handle a majority of the diseases. Health professionals also need to be given chances to gain more education and training on how to manage different types of patients with various diseases that are brought to the ICU for specialized treatment.
The Dartmouth Atlas tool provides quality data on different health conditions and outcomes (Dartmouth Atlas, 2015). For example, this data gives information on the number of diabetic patients who enroll into hospitals and the kind of management that they receive to control the disease. The health sector and the leadership of Pennsylvania can use such data to give more education to the general public on the importance of screening, managing, and treating diabetes and diabetes-related illnesses.
According to the Dartmouth Atlas (2015), there is little information about the health care of children. Northern New England, New Hampshire, and Vermont are the only states that have been providing information about the health care of infants and children to the Dartmouth Atlas (Dartmouth Atlas, 2015). The state of Pennsylvania ought to use this revelation to improve the quality of health care of children and avail the progress to the Dartmouth Atlas for use by the general public.
The Dartmouth Atlas provides a benchmark through which one can compare the various experiences in different hospitals in a given state (Dartmouth Atlas, 2015). The people of Pennsylvanian can use this information to determine the best available hospital that has a record of handling specific conditions efficiently. One cannot fail to recognize the availability of data on post-acute care in the Dartmouth Atlas. This information can be used by the people of Pennsylvania to identify and recommend health centers that have an excellent record of post-acute care. Other important features of the Dartmouth Atlas include the availability of several case studies that can be adopted by the leadership and the health fraternity in Pennsylvania to improve the state’s health care. This website also has useful research articles that can be downloaded and used to impact Pennsylvania’s health system positively.
Conclusion
The Dartmouth Atlas has many useful tools that can be used by different states, Pennsylvania in particular, to improve health care. The website has data regional data, data on individual hospitals in each state, reimbursements to enrollees in different hospitals, children’s health care, post-acute care, hospital discharges, racial disparities, adequate care in different hospitals, and various case studies, as well as research articles on health care. The state of Pennsylvania can use this data to assess the rating of its current health care system and the areas that need improvement. Patients in Pennsylvania can benefit a lot if they use this atlas to access information about the various hospitals in the state and the services they offer.
References
Dartmouth Atlas (2015). The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. Web.
Kenen, J. (2013). Snapshot of state health spending yields some surprises. Association of Health Care Journalists. Web.