(NCQA: Washington) -- Data on clinical performance and patient experience for more than 85 million Americans enrolled in more than 400 commercial health plans are now available from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. NCQA’s Quality Compass, the United States’ most widely used database of health plan performance, includes information on clinical performance and member satisfaction for more than 160 preferred provider plans (PPO) for the first time.

While NCQA has reported data for health maintenance organizations (HMOs) since 1995, this year marks the first time that individual PPO plan data will be reported in Quality Compass. The first-time inclusion of plan-level PPO data accounts in large part for the increase in submissions in this year’s edition of the database; 410 commercial plan submissions are included, up from 251 last year.

“Two-thirds of privately insured Americans receive their coverage from PPOs. This wealth of PPO data gives us a much clearer picture of health plan performance in the United States,” says NCQA chief information officer Rick Moore. “The addition of this data to Quality Compass allows decision makers in the health plan contracting cycle to make meaningful comparisons among both HMO and PPO plans.”

Employers, health plans, pharmaceutical companies, and benefit consultants use Quality Compass to directly compare a health plan’s quality and customer service scores to those of other health plans. The data also can be used to compare plan performance against national and regional benchmarks. The data forms the basis of NCQA’s State of Health Care Quality report, which compiles national averages across more than 25 measures of care. Local data are available to reporters on an embargoed basis prior to the report’s release on October 2.

Quality Compass 2008 includes 16 new measures of care and service quality, including assessments of follow-up care for children prescribed medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as new measures of antibiotic utilization. Data for Medicaid plans will be added to Quality Compass in October.

For more information, visit www.ncqa.org/tabid/796/Default.aspx.