As we are anticipating an Oct 7 release of CMS' Star Ratings data for all contracts, here's some information about the cutpoint changes in the PP2 Tech Notes. We've graphed the 2022 cutpoint changes so you can quickly see the relative change in 2022 versus 2021.

Keep in mind that both 2022 and 2021 data were collected in the midst of Covid-19 so these results aren't typical. If you want to see the long-term trend of all measure's cutpoints,                  

please see

Improving or Maintaining Mental health (MCS) is an important triple weighted HOS measure in the Star metrics, yet it is difficult measure for health plans to measure outside of the annual HOS season, or to move the rating upwards. We’ve often seen health plans respond using standard screening tools for mental health.  In particular the PHQ9 is often used as the first entry point into managing mental health.  The PHQ9 is a 9 quick question screening, the intent is to have the point of care provider screen members and then coordinate services for the member as appropriate.

CMS recently released their 2021 CMS Stars ratings data. Were there more plans and contracts whose ratings declined since last year? Or was there a significant increase in scores?

The largest five Medicare organizations are comprised of 122 Contracts. Comparing the results between 2020 and 2021, 8 of these contracts increased their overall STAR rating by ½ point, 73 contracts remained the same, and 31 decreased by ½ point. 

The 129 smaller organizations are made up by 256 Contracts. Of these contra

On Friday, October 30, 2020 CMS released an Advanced Notice of Methodological Changes for Calendar Year 2022 for Medicare Advantage Capitation Rates and Part C and Part D Payment Polices – Part II. Of note in this release there is updated information on two HEDIS measures that will be of interest to Stars and HEDIS managers. These HEDIS measures have had significant changes in how they are collected, such that they are now on the Stars display page.

Controlling High Blood Pressure – In July 2020 NCQA announced a substantive c

As a company we weren’t sure whether to use AWS or Azure as our preferred cloud platform. To get a better idea of which platform is better, I decided to test them both. Here’s what I learned.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its competitor Microsoft’s Azure are a mixture of several types of services: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS).  These tools enable the creation of virtual servers, databases, website hosts, etc, all configured to the users needs. Cloud platforms elim