The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently released its first online version of Quality Compass, a health plan comparison tool. Quality Compass includes accreditation and HEDIS results on more than 250 commercial health care plans. It allows employers, health plan administrators and others to directly compare health plans’ HEDIS and CAHPS scores to other plans, and national and regional benchmarks. HEDIS and CAHPS are tools health plans use to measure performance. Quality Compass was recently expanded to offer three years of trended data and an optional Excel spreadsheet importation capability.

“Putting Quality Compass online will make the database easier to use and update,” says Margaret E. O’Kane, NCQA president. “The availability of three years’ results makes identifying trends and conducting long-term quality analyses a simpler process.”

Quality Compass’ use of a Web-based platform eliminates the need to download or install applications, and updates to the database will appear in real time. The user interface was reengineered to make navigation and sorting HEDIS results easier. The addition of saved searches provides one-click access to users’ most frequently used database queries.

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