Trending Data

Looking at results obtained over a period of several years can help evaluate whether plans are improving the way they provide care in certain clinical areas.

Trending charts compare health plan performance for clinical measures in the commercial population.  Depending on the availability of comparable data, results are trended over two or three years.  NCQA continuously improves the way performance measures are collected, and occasionally adds new measures, making it difficult to compare ratings for more than three years for specific measures.

Many year-to-year changes are small and may not be meaningful.  For HEDIS measures, changes that are statistically significant are noted with a red or green arrow crossing this year’s and last year’s rates.  In addition, longer-term meaningful changes are noted where the arrow crosses all three years of trend data and compares this year’s results to the 2009 results.  Changes not noted with an arrow are not meaningful and may be due to random chance.

2011 HMO Trending Data

2011 PPO Trending Data

2011 Medicare Trending Data

How to read these graphs (HEDIS)

Not all data are required to be collected yearly. Therefore, the grey bars in the graphs on the following pages indicate that the health plan elected to honor the NCQA rotation strategy for that measurement year and therefore the most recently available data reported by the health plan may be from the prior measurement year.

CCHRI Senior Manager
Julie France, PBGH
jfrance@pbgh.org

Reporting Principles

Guidelines for Use of Data

About the Reports

Clinical Measure Descriptions