The news spread quickly that Wisconsin was again rated the top state in the nation by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). And Gov. Scott Walker was the first to announce it publicly to the media gathered for his August 22 Madison press conference about the health care impacts of Foxconn choosing to locate in Wisconsin.
“I consistently have said our health care systems rank in the top ten, but now we have another ranking that put us at #1, so we are not just top ten, we are number one,” Walker said. “A big part of attracting talent is looking at the quality of your education system and quality of health care system, and we certainly applaud that yet again.”
Wisconsin regularly rates among the top states in the country. In a span of just a month, Wisconsin was ranked #1 by AHRQ on health system performance, and rural hospitals were rated the best in the country among their peers by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) based on quality improvement and public reporting.
The Governor said there are many considerations that companies, such as Foxconn and others, large and small, look at when they are making decisions about where to locate a new facility. Those factors include the availability of a workforce and the business climate, but a big part of it, according to Walker, is the quality of life and whether people want to live and work in that community.
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