(AHRQ: Rockville, MD) -- States are seeing improvements in health care quality, but disparities for their minority and low-income residents persist, according to 2010 State Snapshots, a web-based resource recently released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

New Hampshire, Minnesota, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island showed the greatest overall performance improvement in 2010. The five states with the least overall performance improvement were Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. As in previous years, AHRQ’s 2010 State Snapshots showed that no state does well or poorly on all quality measures.

Among minority and low-income Americans, the level of health care quality and access to services remained unfavorable. The size of disparities related to race and income varied widely across the states.

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