Healthcare Openness and Access Project: Mapping the Frontier for the Next Generation of American Health Care

Abstract

The Healthcare Openness and Access Project (HOAP) is a collection of state-by-state comparative data on the flexibility and discretion US patients and providers have in managing health care. HOAP combines these data to produce 38 indicators of openness and accessibility. In turn, these indicators are grouped into 10 broad subindexes (Corporate, Insurance, Occupational Regulation, Pharmaceutical Access, Telemedicine, Direct Primary Care, Medical Liability, Provider Regulation, Public Health, and Taxation), which in combination form the overall HOAP index. The indicators, subindexes, and overall index are all scored on a 1-to-5 Likert scale. The project provides state-by-state rankings over a number of variables. Using the data provided on the project’s website, readers may adjust the weights on the indicators to custom-build subjective measures and rankings that differ from the ones presented in this paper.