Posted August 22, 2007
Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare: News
New Quality CompassÆ Data Provide Latest Indicators of Quality, Service For 250 Health Plans Serving Nearly 50 Million Americans
New medication management data highlight additions to industry-standard health plan performance database.
Washington, DC, July 30, 2007 — The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today released the latest update of its online Quality CompassÆ, the nation's most widely used database of health plan performance. Quality Compass includes NCQA Accreditation, HEDISÆ clinical quality, and CAHPSÆ member satisfaction data for more than 250 commercial health plan products covering nearly 50 million Americans. Data for Medicaid managed care plans will be available in September.
Quality Compass 2007 includes comparative performance information on several new measures of care and service; notable among them are several measures that look at how well medications are managed. Annual Monitoring for Patients on Persistent Medications examines how well patients on medications such as ACE inhibitors or anticonvulsants are monitored in an effort to prevent adverse drug reactions; such events account for more than 700,000 visits to emergency departments annually.
Other new measures in Quality Compass 2007 include:
- Inappropriate Antibiotic Treatment for Adults with Acute Bronchitis
- Use of Spirometry Testing in the Assessment and Diagnosis of COPD
- Follow-up Care for Children Prescribed ADHD Medication
- Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drug Therapy in Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Childhood Immunization Status - Pneumococcal Conjugate
- Childhood Immunization Status - Combination 3
"Quality Compass is the most complete snapshot of health plan performance available anywhere," said NCQA Director of Information Products Allison Klein. "Quality Compass helps buyers make sound contracting decisions, it's a resource for health care consultants, and it helps health plans determine where they stand relative to their competitors and apportion their quality improvement resources accordingly."
Employers, health plans and others can use Quality Compass to directly compare a health plan's HEDIS and CAHPSÆ scores to those of other health plans or to national and regional benchmarks. Users can also export their search results to a Microsoft ExcelÆ spreadsheet for further analysis; the new edition allows users with the Data Exporter feature access to an expanded set of data in a single download.
Quality Compass data forms the basis for NCQA's annual State of Health Care Quality report; this year's edition will be released on September 25. Local data is available to reporters on an embargoed basis prior to the report's release.
Quality Compass 2007 and its optional electronic data files can be ordered online through NCQA's Web site, www.ncqa.org, or by calling (888) 275-7585.
NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations and recognizes physicians in key clinical areas. NCQA's Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web, media and data licensing agreements in order to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices.
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