South Dakota among Top Ten States for Healthcare

High marks in insurance premiums, physician staffing, and child immunization rates have landed South Dakota in the top ten for healthcare among all U.S. States.

The Mount Rushmore State is tied for ninth with Tennessee in the rankings, published by MoneyRates.com.

The website used data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Kaiser Family Foundation to rank each state's performance in the following eight categories:

• Health Insurance Coverage - based on the percentage of each state's population covered by health insurance.
• Self-Reported Health Status - based on the percentage of each state's population that reported their health status to be better than "fair" or "poor."
• Child Immunization Coverage - based on the percentage of young children in each state who had been immunized.
• Infant Survival Rates - based on the percentage of births in each state to survive their first year.
• Adequacy of Nursing Home Staffing - based on the number of such staffers compared to each state's population aged 65 or older.
• Adequacy of Doctors' Office Staffing - based on the staffing of doctors' offices relative to each state's population.
• In-Patient Expense/Day - based on the average cost of a day of inpatient care in each state.
• Annual Healthcare Premium affordability - based on the average cost of health insurance premiums in each state.

South Dakota's spot on the list was bolstered by a trio of top two rankings: annual healthcare premiums (1st), child immunization rates (2nd), and physician staffing rates per 10,000 people (2nd).

The state also landed in the top 20 in average in-patient expense per day (16th).

On the other end of the spectrum, South Dakota was in the bottom third of states in health insurance coverage (39th), infant survival rates (42nd), and self-reported health status (43rd).

The state landed near the middle on nursing home staffing per 10,000 people aged 65 and up (26th).

The 10 Best States for Healthcare 2020 (MoneyRates.com)

1. Massachusetts
2. Connecticut
3. North Dakota
4. Iowa
5. Vermont
6. Nebraska
7. Rhode Island
8. Minnesota
9. (tie) South Dakota, Tennessee

Looking big picture, MoneyRates classified each state by the way you might describe a person's health and South Dakota was one of only ten states to rate as 'robust', which includes the top 20 percent of states.

The 10 Worst States for Healthcare 2020 (MoneyRates.com)

1. South Carolina
2. Alaska
3. New Mexico
4. Oklahoma
5. Georgia
6. Arizona
7. Idaho
8. Texas
9. North Carolina
10. Mississippi