How To Read These Reports1

There are three symbols to show how well a doctor's office scored on the measures reported on this website.  

• Doctors' offices with a completely filled circle scored highest on the measure.
• Doctors' offices with a half-filled circle scored higher than some, but lower than others on the measure.
• Doctors' offices with an empty circle scored lower than many doctor's offices on the measure.

 

While viewing report results, you can click on the symbol to see the doctor's office's actual score for each measure. 

 

When viewing a report page, you will see the Symbol Key to show you how to read the symbols. This key shows the direction of scores from lower to higher. You can click on the key to review the symbol descriptions at anytime without leaving the page.

Not necessarily. A low score can simply mean that the medical group needs to improve that one aspect of care. Doctors' offices are working hard to improve healthcare. MHQP expects these improvements to show up in future quality reports.

 

Each quality measure looks at just one aspect of the care. A doctor's office with one low score can still give good care in other areas. Compared to other parts of the country, Massachusetts doctors do very well on these quality measures. Also, the results of these measures can be affected by many things including the types of systems the medical group has to support high quality care (such as electronic medical records or systems for following up with a patient), as well as how often patients see their doctor and follow recommendations.

 When you see ND in place of a circle symbol it means that  MHQP has too little data to report on this measure. This can happen when: 

• Not enough patients answered the questions about a doctor's office.
• Not enough patients at a doctor's office received care that could be included in measure results.
• Not enough doctors in a doctor's office gave care that could be included in measure results.