Relationships among performance measures for Medicare managed care plans.

The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) has relied primarily on the Health Employer Data Information Set (HEDIS), the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Study (CAHPS), and the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) to track health plan performance. However, many relations among these measures are unknown. We found significant relationships between four HEDIS measures and many items in the CAHPS measure as well as items in HOS concerning beneficiary general health ratings. Our study suggests that interpretation of performance data is improved by integrating access, effectiveness of care, beneficiary experience, health status, and risk measures into an analytic framework.