For health care quality, access and costs, it's about location, location, location, a study finds

The Commonwealth Fund found significant variation based on "hospital referral regions."  

National Journal: Big Variations Found In Health Care Quality, Community To Community
Health care reform may be coming to the whole country, but our health care system is still very local. That's the conclusion of a new scorecard from the Commonwealth Fund that looks at health and health care in regions around the country. The report split up the country into small "hospital referral regions," and tracked a wide array of health measures and evaluations of system performances (Sanger-Katz, 3/14).

Modern Healthcare: Access, Quality, Costs Vary Widely, Says Commonwealth Report
Healthcare access, quality and costs vary widely from one community to another, according to a report from the Commonwealth Fund. Using 43 metrics, including percentage of insured adults and 30-day mortality rates for heart attack, Commonwealth Fund researchers assessed health system performance in 306 hospital referral regions across the country. St. Paul, Minn., Dubuque, Iowa, and Appleton, Wis., were among the top communities overall, while Shreveport, La., and Jackson, Miss, were ranked among the bottom 10 (McKinney, 3/14).