Quick Question

What's the ranking once Doyle's Hospital Tax kicks in?

Led by the performance of its hospitals, Wisconsin was ranked first in the nation in health care quality based on information compiled by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The ranking - based on 129 quality measures in four different care settings - gave Wisconsin the highest overall score among 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The state's hospitals also were given the highest score in the country.

The information released Monday marked the first year that the agency compiled and released an overall score for each state. The agency has been releasing state information on health care quality for four years.

Wisconsin historically has ranked high in surveys on health care quality.

"Pretty consistently, we are sitting in the top-performing states," said Dana Richardson, vice president of quality for the Wisconsin Hospital Association.

Wisconsin also was among the five best-performing states in ambulatory care and ranked in the top 25% for nursing home care.

Home health care was the anomaly: The state's overall score was 25, far below the scores of 95 for the top performing states, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The annual "State Snapshots" from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are an example of the move by the federal government and others to develop more accurate measures of health care quality - and to make that information available to the public.