Baltimore Health Analytics

BHA Analyses

2024_07_BHA_2025_Simulated_Cutpoints_with_Guardrails_impact.xlsx

BHA Analysis which simulates the 2025 Stars cutpoints by applying guardrails to the 2024 initial Tukey cutpoints to guage the impact of guardrails in 2025 star ratings

Added : 07/19/2024 by Ronak Bavishi

Source : BHA

2024-06-11_BHA_Predicted_Star_Changed_with_Notes.xlsx

BHAs initial Guardrail analysis to predict the impact of CMS cutpoints changes prior to the CMS announcement that they would indeed make the recalculation.

Added : 06/18/2024 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : BHA

CMS Announcements

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/19/2021-00538/medicare-and-medicaid-programs-contract-year-2022-policy-and-technical-changes-to-the-medicare#h-63

Federal register June 2022 announcement of 2023 changes to Medicare with a summary of comments from the public and CMS's response. Star Ratings start on page 5917 (about 25% of the document).

Added : 08/11/2022 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : Federal Register

https://www.cms.gov/files/document/2023-star-ratings-technical-notes.pdf

2023 Star Ratings Technical Notes

Added : 08/19/2022 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : CMS

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/04/12/2023-07115/medicare-program-contract-year-2024-policy-and-technical-changes-to-the-medicare-advantage-program

April 5 final rule that codifies HEI (2027 Star Year), reduces patient experience weight, and finalizes some other items. The "Hold Harmless" provision is not mentioned. Explicitly not finalized items (see page2) are deferred to a later rule - removing MRP, adding several drug measures, removing guardrails, and especially modifying the Improvement Measures Hold Harmless policy.

Added : 04/25/2023 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : CMS - Federal Register

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/15/2023-24118/medicare-program-contract-year-2025-policy-and-technical-changes-to-the-medicare-advantage-program

2025 Proposed Rule

Added : 12/01/2023 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : CMS

Tutorials

BHA_Scenario_Manager_-_Tutorial.mp4

BHA's Scenario Manager Tutorial - This tutorial provides details on how to use BHA's Scenario Manager and Multiplanner apps for simulating and planning for future measure changes.

Added : 02/23/2024 by Ronak Bavishi

Source : BHA

Stars 101 Crash Course

2022-08-24_Stars101_Part_1_-_Stars_Basics.pptx

Part 1/4 of our 6-hour Stars 101 tutorial covers the importance of Stars, financial implications, and categories of measures.

Added : 09/13/2022 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : BHA

2022-09-09_Stars101_Part_2_-_Mechanics_of_Measures.pptx

Part 2/4 of our 6-hour Stars 101 tutorial covers the calculation details of each category of measures.

Added : 09/13/2022 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : BHA

2022-10-04_Stars_101_Part_3_-_Interventions_for_Gaps.pptx

Part 3/4 of our 6-hour Stars 101 tutorial covers 'Gap' measure interventions with member provider focus.

Added : 10/25/2022 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : BHA

2022-11-01_Stars_101_Part_4_-_Stars_Management.pptx

Part 4/4 of our 6-hour Stars 101 tutorial discusses the overall management of Stars, data, and specific pointers on survey and operations measures.

Added : 11/03/2022 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : BHA

CMS Data and Analysis

https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Prescription-Drug-Coverage/PrescriptionDrugCovGenIn/PerformanceData

CMS's annual release of Stars Data can be found here.

Added : 08/01/2022 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : CMS Website

Compare_July_vs_Original_Oct_2024_Stars.xlsx

Excel file for your own analysis. Lays July 2024 Star Ratings side-by-side with Original October Release w/formatting and pivots. (Open to anyone)

Added : 07/02/2024 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : CMS w/analysis

2024_Recalculated_Star_Ratings_Analysis.pdf

BHA's analysis of membership by parent org impact by star rating, October vs July. (Subscribers only)

Added : 07/03/2024 by Jeff Schoenborn

Source : BHA Analysis

Stars Planner

Chart out a realistic plan to achieve 4 Stars with at-a-glance access to historical performance by measure for your contract and average scores for your competitors and peer organiztions. It is an interactive dashboard that keeps a tally while you set goals for each measure.

Contract History

Use this tool to show the history of all contracts within an organizantion and visualize how they have grown and merged while Star ratings have changed over time. Quickly compare the scores and star ratings for several contracts or compare the same contract for two years.

Star Measure Details

Quick lookup for all Star measures with CMS documentation.

Map of Medicare

Click here to get a snapshot of all Medicare Advantage plans by size and Overall Star ratings. Drill into details or change the measure displayed. You can page through prior years and quickly understand how Star ratings have changed over time.

State MA Population

Quick lookup for Medicare Advantage populations by state.

Quick Contract List

Click here to get a searchable list of all CMS Medicare Advantage contracts. From here you can view star ratings and population demographic, or you can launch our other tools for deeper analysis.

Computer Aided Abstraction

The BHA Ocular is used to read the text from any images or any scanned documents or any hand written papers or printed papers. This is mainly used in any kind of images containing written text into machine-readable text.

Health Data Management

Healthcare data is full of idiosyncrasies and our web applications are full of healthcare data. When you engage Baltimore Health Analytics on a project, you get the benefit of our years of experience solving the challenges that these present. Along with that, we have a library of programs that save time by solving very specific problems that we see again and again.

Transition Care Management

A system to manage the work health plans do to improve the NCQA Transitions of Care measure and CMS Star Ratings.