NCQA is pleased to announce our continuing collaboration with U.S. News & World Report to assess the performance of health plans. You can view the rankings at http://www.usnews.com/healthplans.

“America’s Best Health Insurance Plans” will be featured in print and online editions of U.S. News & World Report. The December 2009* issue will feature U.S. News/NCQA rankings of the nation’s top 50 commercial health plans based on their combined HEDIS®, CAHPS® and NCQA Accreditation standards scores. The issue will also feature lists of the nation’s Top 25 Medicare and Medicaid plans.  

Plans named to the America’s Best Health Insurance Plans lists enjoy exceptional visibility from one of the nation’s leading and most-trusted sources of news. In addition, visitors to usnews.com will be able to view health plans’ performance on HEDIS measures in selected areas and make comparisons between and among plans in their area.

2009 Rankings to Include Managed Care Organizations Only

It should be noted that the 2009 edition of America’s Best Health Insurance Plans only applies to managed care organizations.  NCQA and U.S. News are currently exploring options to rank preferred provider organizations in 2010. 

2009 Production Schedule

Final rankings and scores were distributed to plans that submitted HEDIS to NCQA on Monday, November 9. The feature is slated to appear in the issue of U.S. News that will hit newsstands on December 1, 2009.

While there are no major changes to the methodology this year, it should be noted that the group of measures used to rank plans has, as always, evolved slightly. Some HEDIS measures have been added to the measure set while others have been retired in the past year.

Please contact NCQA’s Communications Coordinator, Ashley Carter, at acarter@ncqa.org with any questions.

* U.S. News & World Report has changed the print issue date to December 2009. The date the rankings will be posted online, November 12, has not changed. Rankings are considered to be public on November 12, 2009 and plans can advertise accordingly (updated July 1, 2009).

• Identified the measures that have been removed because they do not meet the eligibility requirements based on the actual data received
• Clarified the definition of “insufficient data”
  
• Changed the Medicaid Diabetes indicator scoring in the Methodology from "2" to "1/4." 
• Changed date for HEDIS submission confirmation email from the week of August 3rd to the week of August 17th
• Removed policy re: advertising previous year rankings after the embargo date and revised policy re: identifying rankings by year.