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<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; It looks like taking two steps forward and one-and-a-half back, but a new report shows Wilkes-Barre became a slightly healthier city since 2011. Of 36 factors used to gauge more than 300 cities, Wilkes-Barre improved in 10 and got worse in eight. The other 18? Meh.</p><p>For example, adult obesity declined from 31 to 28 percent, but infant mortality rose from 6.6 to 8.5 deaths per 1,000 live births. The number of long-stay nursing home residents using anti-psychotic medications declined from 21 percent to 17 percent, but high-risk nursing home residents with pressure sores rose from five to six percent.</p><p>The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that bills itself as promoting &#8220;a high-performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency,&#8221; released the report Thursday. The official title is &#8220;Scorecard on Local Health System Performance.&#8221;</p><p>It breaks the 36 factors into four categories: Access and affordability with five factors related to insurance and doctor or dentist visits; Prevention and treatment with 13 factors including vaccinations, cancer screenings, and hospital safety; Avoidable hospital use and cost with nine factors including hospital re-admissions and potentially avoidable emergency room visits; and healthy lives with nine factors including breast and colorectal cancer deaths, suicides, smoking and obesity.</p><p>The other factors that got worse for Wilkes-Barre:</p><p>&#8226; Fewer adults had age-appropriate vaccines, down from 41 percent to 34 percent. Nationwide, the rate was 35 percent.</p><p>&#8226; Adults with a regular source of care dipped slightly from 90 percent to 87 percent, though that was still well above the national rate of 79 percent.</p><p>&#8226; Patients receiving home health care and enrolled in Medicare who landed in the hospital rose from 16 percent to 17 percent; the national rate was 16 percent.</p><p>&#8226; The rate of &#8220;potentially avoidable emergency department visits&#8221; among those enrolled in Medicare rose from 146 to 160 per 1,000 beneficiaries, still well below the national rate of 181 per 1,000.</p><p>&#8226; Wilkes-Barre saw a dramatic increase in the amount of money spent per person for those insured through employer-sponsored policies, from $6,016 to $9,362, nearly double the national rate of $4,569. In fact, the report singles out Wilkes-Barre as the city with the highest expenditure in this category.</p><p>Along with the decline in obesity and anti-psychotic medication in nursing homes, other gains in the city were:</p><p>&#8226; More home health care patients reported being able to get around better, up from 62 percent to 66 percent. The national rate was 63 percent.</p><p>&#8226; More hospitalized patients getting information about what to do during home recovery, rising from 85 percent to 87 percent. The national rate was 86 percent.</p><p>&#8226; A slightly better &#8220;hospital safety composite score&#8221; calculated by looking at rates of various complications. The lower the score the better, and Wilkes-Barre&#8217;s dropped from 0.9 to 0.8, which mirrors the national rate.</p><p>&#8226; A drop in the number of at-risk adults going without a doctor visit for two years, from 15 percent to 13 percent, lower than the national rate of 14 percent.</p><p>&#8226; A drop in the rate of Medicare recipients being readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of discharge, from 40 to 34 per 1,000 beneficiaries. That&#8217;s still well above the national rate of 27 per 1,000.</p><p>&#8226; Hospital admissions for Medicare recipients because of ambulatory care-sensitive conditions dropped from 38 to 32 per 1,000 beneficiaries, still well above the national rate of 27 per 1,000.</p><p>&#8226; Adults ages 18-64 reporting fair/poor health dropped from 30 percent to 25 percent, matching the national rate.</p><p>&#8226; Medicare recipients with any of three conditions &#8212; dementia, hip fracture or renal failure &#8212; are less likely to be prescribed a drug contraindicated for those conditions. The rate dropped from 17 percent to 13 percent, both below the national rate of 20 percent.</p><p>One of the area&#8217;s best documented vices &#8212; smoking &#8212; did not change, sitting at 23 percent, which is well above the national rate of 19 percent.</p><p>The report cites a national decline in uninsured adults ages 18 to 64 as one of the &#8220;most visible gains&#8221; in the data with the rate dropping four percentage points to 16 percent uninsured. Wilkes-Barre was outdoing the national rate even after that decline. The city went from 13 percent of adults uninsured to 12 percent.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Report: Wilkes-Barre nudges to the healthier side