Utilizing public federal and state data. Where UK HealthCare stands against peer academic medical centers, where need is rising across its 27-county service region — and the five responses the data argues for.
An independent analytics portfolio project by Dan Weingart, built entirely from public federal and state data. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced for the University of Kentucky or UK HealthCare.
Eight regional academic medical centers, one CMS report card — read against two reference points: the peer set itself and the Kentucky acute-care average. UK HealthCare operates from strength — a 4-star rating only one of these seven peers exceeds — which makes the two exceptions below stand out all the more sharply.
Kentucky's age-adjusted lung-cancer incidence — 59% above the national rate. Every county UK HealthCare serves sits above the US line. This is the ground Pillar Two maps.
UK HealthCare's 27-county footprint runs from the Bluegrass into the Appalachian counties that carry the nation's heaviest cancer burden. Scroll the map — the story advances in three beats.
Every county, shaded by age-adjusted incidence. The statewide rate — 83.7 per 100,000 — is 59% above the national average, and the darkest counties concentrate in the Appalachian east.
The outlined counties run at more than twice the US rate of 52.5. Rockcastle reaches 123.8; Owsley, 130.5. If these counties were a state, it would be the worst in America by a wide margin.
Every outlined county has a UKHC access point: 12 hold a UKHC-branded facility (solid dots), 15 are reached through partner hospitals, health departments, and outreach clinics (hollow rings). The burden map and the footprint map are the same map — which is exactly what makes low-dose CT screening deployable here.
| County | Rate /100k | vs US | UKHC presence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rockcastle | 123.8 | 2.4× | Rockcastle Regional outreach |
| Floyd | 119.6 | 2.3× | Highlands Regional outreach |
| Whitley | 117.9 | 2.2× | Baptist Health Corbin outreach |
| Knox | 116.5 | 2.2× | Knox Co. Health Dept outreach |
| Clay | 113.4 | 2.2× | UK HealthCare – Manchester |
| Montgomery | 113 | 2.2× | Mount Sterling Clinic |
| Perry | 112 | 2.1× | UK Center for Excellence in Rural Health (Hazard) |
| Pike | 103.4 | 2× | Pikeville Medical / health dept |
Set the oncology story aside for a moment and the catchment's chronic-disease profile shows a second, faster-moving trend. Diagnosed depression (adults ever told they have a depressive disorder) climbed 2.2 points in two PLACES release cycles — to 29% of adults — while smoking and uninsurance both improved.
That combination matters strategically: the payer picture is getting better at the same moment behavioral-health demand is climbing. The binding constraint is shifting from coverage to clinical capacity — which is what Recommendation 04 responds to.
Each recommendation pairs a measured fact with an operational response — ranked by leverage.
The data: SEP-1 compliance is 20% — vs a 66.6% Kentucky average and 50–67% at six of the seven peer AMCs (UVA, at 25%, is the outlier).
The response: Stand up a sepsis task force with ED + hospitalist co-ownership: order-set redesign, hour-one lactate/culture/antibiotic bundle, real-time abstraction feedback. SEP-1 is now tied to value-based purchasing — this is the single highest-leverage measure on the board, and UK's fast ED throughput proves the operational muscle is already there.
The data: HF 30-day mortality (11.7%) is the highest of the eight peer AMCs. The low readmission rate (17.8%) should not be read as reassurance: mortality and readmission compete, since patients who die cannot be readmitted. Read together, both point to the acute episode.
The response: Focus inside the walls: guideline-directed medical therapy at discharge, cardiology consult coverage for every HF admission, and Gill Heart & Vascular escalation pathways for cardiogenic shock. Pair the review with case-mix analysis — as the state's referral destination for the sickest HF patients, UK should confirm how much of the gap risk adjustment already accounts for before treating it as pure performance.
The data: County lung-cancer rates across the catchment average 91.8/100k vs 52.5 nationally, and Kentucky's rate is declining about a quarter slower than the nation's (−2.7 vs −3.5%/yr). Rockcastle, Floyd, Whitley, Knox, and Clay all exceed 113/100k.
The response: Route Markey's low-dose CT screening through the existing outreach network — the watchlist counties above already host a UKHC clinic or partner site. Pair LDCT eligibility outreach with the falling-but-still-21% smoking rate: every point of screening penetration in these counties finds cancer earlier than anywhere else in America.
The data: Diagnosed depression in the catchment rose +2.2 points in two years to 29.0% of adults — the fastest-rising burden in the region — while smoking (−4.2) and uninsurance (−3.9) improve.
The response: Embed collaborative-care behavioral health in the Kentucky Clinic network and the regional clinics (Georgetown, Winchester, Frankfort, Manchester, Whitesburg), with tele-psychiatry leveraging the Eastern State relationship. The payer picture is improving at exactly the moment demand is climbing — the access gap is now clinical capacity, not coverage.
The data: Ten hospitals inside UKHC's 27-county catchment rate 2 CMS stars or fewer — Pikeville Medical and Middlesboro ARH at 1 star — against UK's 4. The region's complex care has no higher-rated destination than Lexington.
The response: Formalize the hub-and-spoke: transfer agreements with published acceptance service levels, co-managed service lines, and tele-consult through the partner network that already operates in these counties. The goal is not to pull routine care out of local hospitals — it is to make escalation to Lexington fast and predictable when complexity demands it. UK's ED throughput, 58–95 minutes faster than the flagship AMCs for admitted patients, is the receiving capacity that makes the promise credible.
Stake figures are illustrative arithmetic on CMS and CDC public denominators — sized to show magnitude, not statistical estimates.
CMS Provider Data Catalog (Care Compare — Hospitals), April 2026 refresh: overall star ratings, HCAHPS, timely & effective care, unplanned visits, complications & deaths. UK HealthCare = CCN 180067. Kentucky averages are unweighted means across the state's acute-care hospitals reporting each measure. Measurement windows vary by measure: ED throughput and sepsis cover July 2024–June 2025, ED volume calendar 2024, mortality and condition-specific readmissions pool July 2021–June 2024, and hospital-wide readmission covers July 2023–June 2024.
CDC PLACES county releases (2022 and 2024; the 2024 release is the latest complete chronic-disease snapshot). Trend deltas compare the two releases' age-adjusted prevalence. Cancer incidence and mortality: NCI/CDC State Cancer Profiles, 2018–2022. Catchment-level summaries are unweighted means of county values unless labeled otherwise; PLACES figures are model-based small-area estimates, not direct surveys.
The 27-county service region is derived from UK HealthCare's published directory of hospitals, clinics, and outreach locations — each catchment county hosts at least one UKHC facility or staffed partner site.
Want to dig past the story? The data room holds everything else the data supports — all twenty-one CMS measures for the peer set, an interactive county explorer across nine health measures, and every Kentucky hospital's rating.
Commonwealth Signal is an independent analytics portfolio project by Dan Weingart. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced for the University of Kentucky or UK HealthCare. All data are drawn from public federal and state sources and reflect the reporting periods noted above.