I know that Boston has prestigious hospitals, but I’m unclear how to usefully compare the health they deliver.
One thing I can compare is the ease of getting blood tests. Most states allow residents to order blood tests via privatemdlabs.com, Life Extension, etc. But MA is one of the states that prohibits that, meaning that if you want tests that an average doctor thinks are unneeded (as I often do), it can be costly and time consuming to find a doctor who will sign off on them.
If you have a weird case, the prestigious teaching hospitals are very good for your outcomes. I probably owe 30% or so of being alive to the fact that Emerson Hospital didn’t dismiss my self-reports of stabbing pain the night before I was supposed to get a hernia fixed as being a weird patient self-reporting about the hernia badly. As a result, they checked for and found appendicitis, and a serious case of it, which I was told (afterward) was probably life-threatening. However, if you check into the hospital without anything seriously wrong with you, you run a decent risk of them finding something less serious wrong with you, which can be pretty bad for your quality of life. (This led to my great-grandmother’s rapid decline between age 100 and 105.)
In general, New England’s culture is very much “nanny state”. Experts are presumed to know what’s good for you better than you do, whether they’re doctors or legislators. (New Hampshire mostly excepted.) I’d expect this to interact poorly with the high level of education in the state, but it seems stable so I guess not.
I know that Boston has prestigious hospitals, but I’m unclear how to usefully compare the health they deliver.
One thing I can compare is the ease of getting blood tests. Most states allow residents to order blood tests via privatemdlabs.com, Life Extension, etc. But MA is one of the states that prohibits that, meaning that if you want tests that an average doctor thinks are unneeded (as I often do), it can be costly and time consuming to find a doctor who will sign off on them.
If you have a weird case, the prestigious teaching hospitals are very good for your outcomes. I probably owe 30% or so of being alive to the fact that Emerson Hospital didn’t dismiss my self-reports of stabbing pain the night before I was supposed to get a hernia fixed as being a weird patient self-reporting about the hernia badly. As a result, they checked for and found appendicitis, and a serious case of it, which I was told (afterward) was probably life-threatening. However, if you check into the hospital without anything seriously wrong with you, you run a decent risk of them finding something less serious wrong with you, which can be pretty bad for your quality of life. (This led to my great-grandmother’s rapid decline between age 100 and 105.)
In general, New England’s culture is very much “nanny state”. Experts are presumed to know what’s good for you better than you do, whether they’re doctors or legislators. (New Hampshire mostly excepted.) I’d expect this to interact poorly with the high level of education in the state, but it seems stable so I guess not.
You can look at the data from the Leapfrog Group and CMS.