For but another year, Mississippi’s well being system efficiency has been deemed the worst within the nation. 

The complete annual report from the Commonwealth Fund, a non-public well being care analysis basis, ranked Mississippi as one of many worst states for various well being classes, together with reproductive and ladies’s well being and racial well being fairness, based mostly on the newest accessible knowledge from 2021. 

The fund has consistently found stark well being disparities in Mississippi and ranked the state close to the underside or final for various measures used to guage well being system efficiency. 

The outcomes hardly come as a shock to Dr. Daniel Edney, Mississippi’s state well being officer. As the chief of the state well being division, he’s intimately conversant in the well being care challenges Mississippians are up towards.

“If we had 60 states, we’d be 60th in health,” he stated. “Someone has to be 50th, but it doesn’t have to be us.”

Within Mississippi’s healthcare system rating, a few of the worst classes are the state’s preterm start charge, toddler mortality charge, breast and cervical most cancers deaths, and untimely deaths. 

The latter is a class that worsened since final yr’s report, and the fund connects the rise, which has lowered the nation’s common life expectancy, to the COVID-19 pandemic. People of shade skilled the steepest declines. Mississippi’s avoidable loss of life charge surged greater than 35 p.c between 2019 and 2021. 

The scorecard for the primary time included measures to guage state reproductive care and ladies’s well being efficiency, and the outcomes confirmed that all through the nation, ladies struggled to obtain ample well being care. Those difficulties have been particularly pronounced in Mississippi. The solely state with worse outcomes was New Mexico. 

Mortality charges for girls of reproductive age usually elevated throughout all states, together with Mississippi, particularly amongst American Indian/Alaska Native and Black ladies. Mississippi’s maternal mortality charge between 2019 and 2021 was the best, with 50.3 deaths per 100,000 stay births. 

The report stated that lots of the deaths may very well be attributed to inequitable entry to complete well being care and racial and ethnic disparities in high quality of care, even on the similar hospitals. Growing “maternity care deserts” and lack of insurance coverage protection contributes to the issue.

Furthermore, Mississippi ranked on the backside when contemplating well being care entry and affordability. 

Edney has lengthy harassed that maternal and toddler mortality is among the largest well being care challenges the state is going through.

“It’s critically important that we… take the fact that we have the lowest life expectancy, the highest infant death rate, and one of the highest maternal death rates in the country very seriously and stop accepting it as our lot in life,” Edney stated. “We must be willing to do whatever it takes to get us off the bottom in health.”

According to consultants on the Commonwealth Fund, postpartum care is important to bettering reproductive well being outcomes. Mississippi prolonged postpartum Medicaid protection to at least one yr this legislative session. 

But consultants say it’ll take greater than only one coverage change to show the state’s well being care disaster round.

The state well being division, at the side of the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, has just lately created a program that sends nurses to the properties of moms experiencing high-risk pregnancies. While the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies program presently serves about 700 individuals throughout the state, Edney stated it’s not almost sufficient.

However, Edney previously told Mississippi Today he didn’t get the state funding this yr to rent extra nurses for this system.

The report additionally confirmed that 22.4 p.c of ladies in Mississippi didn’t obtain prenatal care within the first trimester. An investigation by Mississippi Today discovered that the state Division of Medicaid, the biggest funder of births within the state, doesn’t monitor when anticipating moms go to their first prenatal appointment.

Many of the states with a few of the worst well being outcomes have been these with out Medicaid growth, together with Mississippi. Republican state leaders have remained steadfast of their opposition to the coverage change. 

And now, because the Magnolia State begins to really feel the compounded results of the reversal of abortion rights, a crumbling health care system and the unwinding of pandemic-era policies that prolonged insurance coverage protection, the state of affairs could also be poised to worsen.