Study finds Ohio women’s health care system ‘worse than average’ compared to nation

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The health care system in Ohio was found to be “worse than average” specifically for women, in a recent study.

Ohio was ranked 29th overall compared with all other U.S. states and the District of Columbia in a 2024 “state scorecard on women’s health and reproductive care” completed by the national Commonwealth Fund.

The study – which used 32 measures of access, quality and health outcomes – concluded that nationally, deaths from “preventable causes are on the rise and deep inequities persist, leading to stark racial differences in maternal mortality and deaths from breast and cervical cancers.”

“Despite a small rebound in women’s life expectancy in 2022, it remains at its lowest since 2006,” the report stated.

The negative outlooks in health trends found by the study were attributed to “state policy choices and judicial decisions that limit (women’s) access to the full range of health services and reproductive care.”

Researchers referenced the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 as a point which “further fractured women’s health care access and dramatically affected the ability of providers to treat pregnancy complications.”

In Ohio, the Supreme Court decision opened the door for Attorney General Dave Yost to ask a federal court to reinstate a six-week abortion ban in Ohio, which had been entangled in a lawsuit that kept it from being enforced until the high-court decision. The law would stay in effect for two months until a new lawsuit was filed and an indefinite pause on enforcement was eventually put in place by a Hamilton County judge.

Since that time, a constitutional amendment that included reproductive rights including abortion services, miscarriage care and fertility treatments was approved by a majority of voters last year, and lawsuits have multiplied in an attempt to undo state laws that abortion rights and legal advocates say now violate the constitution.

In a breakdown of categories studied in the report, Ohio was ranked 35th in health and reproductive care outcomes, which included maternal and “all-cause women’s mortality,” along with infant mortality and physical and mental health status.

Maternal deaths in Ohio while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy stood at 28.4 per 100,000 live births from 2020-2022, when the U.S. average was 26.3 per 100,000 live births.

Maternal mortality has been a consistent problem in the state, with recent studies showing the problems with maternal care in Ohio affect the health of women of color especially , and state legislators saying the administrative burden is heavier for state programs because the maternal mortality struggle exists.

In insurance coverage, provider accessibility and health care affordability, Ohio came in 29th, and it was 30th when it came to health care quality and prevention, which takes into account pre-and postpartum care, mental health care screenings, preventive care and “low-risk cesarean birth rate.”

The study found the state performed more positively when it came to the rate of uninsured women aged 19 to 64, the maternity care workforce per 100,000 women aged 15 to 44 and improvements in women aged 18 to 44 receiving routine checkups in the past two years.

Researchers found the worst categories in the state were self-pay in-hospital births, poor mental health for women aged 18 to 64 and infant mortality per 1,000 live births.

The rate of infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the state came in at 7.1 in the 2021 data used for the study, ranking the state at 44th in the country. The U.S. average was reported at 5.4 per 1,000 live births during the same period.

The study also reported less than one abortion clinic per 100,000 women aged 15 to 44 in the state, versus the U.S. average of 1.5 clinics per 100,000 women in that age group.

The percentage of women lacking health insurance in the state fell below the national average in 2022 data, with 6% of women between ages 19 and 64 living without insurance, while 10% of the nation’s women in that age group are without health insurance.

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