Development of a Medicare plan dashboard to promote health equity

To describe a multistage process of designing and evaluating a dashboard that presents data on how equitably health plans provide care for their members.

We designed a dashboard for presenting summative and finer-grained data to health plans for characterizing how well plans are serving individuals who belong to racial/ethnic minority groups and individuals with low income. The data presented in the dashboard were based on CMS' Health Equity Summary Score (HESS) for Medicare Advantage plans.

Interviews and listening sessions were conducted with health plan representatives and other stakeholders to assess understanding, perceived usefulness, and interpretability of HESS data. Usability testing was conducted with individuals familiar with quality measurement and reporting to evaluate dashboard design efficiency.

Listening session participants understood the purpose of the HESS and expressed a desire for this type of information. Usability testing revealed a need to improve dashboard navigability and to streamline content.

The HESS dashboard is a potentially useful tool for presenting data on health equity to health plans. The multistage process of continual testing and improvement used to develop the dashboard could be a model for targeting and deciding upon quality improvement efforts in the domain of health equity.