About this Course

Quality Compass Insights Series #2: Turning Data into Decisions: Understanding Trends & Benchmarking Performance

Understanding performance trends requires more than simply comparing two years of results. Changes in specifications, care delivery, reporting practices, and industry performance can all influence measure outcomes.

This session focuses on helping Quality Compass users interpret trends in a practical, data-driven way. Faculty will explain how NCQA evaluates trend breaks, discuss notable MY 2025 performance shifts, and share examples of measures that experienced significant changes both with and without specification updates.

The session will also explore the transition to ECDS measures, including how traditional measures can be trended to ECDS measures and what users can expect as additional measures transition in future years.

The webinar includes moderated Q&A and will prepare participants for the final session in the series on turning benchmarking insights into action.

What You Will Learn

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

•  Define trend breaks and explain how NCQA determines when a trend break is warranted.
•  Identify when year-over-year comparisons are appropriate and when caution is needed.
•  Recognize meaningful shifts in performance and distinguish them from normal variation.
•  Interpret examples of MY 2025 measures that experienced significant performance changes.
• Explain potential factors that may contribute to performance shifts beyond specification updates.
• Understand how traditional measures relate to ECDS measures and how trending will evolve as ECDS adoption expands.
•  Apply trending insights to support performance interpretation and quality improvement efforts.

HEDIS® is a registered trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

Who Should Attend

• Current Quality Compass users

• Prospective Quality Compass customers

• Health plans

• Health systems

• Health IT and technology vendors

• HEDIS reporting teams

• Quality analysts

• Compliance and audit stakeholders

• Professionals who use or interpret health care quality data

Faculty

Madison Yaniz
Assistant Directror, Information Products, NCQA

Madison Yaniz is Assistant Director of Information Products at NCQA, where she oversees Quality Compass®, Data Licensing, and Specification Licensing products. She works closely with health plans, providers, researchers, and other stakeholders to help them leverage healthcare quality data and HEDIS® measures for benchmarking, performance improvement, and strategic decision-making.

Priya Desai
Analyst, NCQA

Priya Desai, a highly motivated healthcare professional with a strong commitment to advancing quality improvement initiatives.  As a valued analyst on the Information Products team at NCQA, Priya directly supports NCQA's mission of fostering healthcare excellence through her work on the Quality Compass product.  Her expertise in customer success empowers users to translate Quality Compass data into actionable insights, ultimately driving measurable improvements in healthcare quality. Leveraging her public health degree from East Carolina University, Priya brings a data-driven approach, positively making an impact on the healthcare landscape. 

Shawn Trivette
Data Scientist II, NCQA

Shawn Alan Trivette, Ph.D., has been a Data Scientist with NCQA for over almost seven years; he is a broadly trained social scientist with over a decade of experience conducting, publishing, and mentoring research projects on a diverse array of topics. He has expertise in quantitative, qualitative, and network-based research methods, with peer reviewed publications grounded in each approach. He has worked on numerous projects at NCQA, including evaluating a variety of health equity metrics, assessing the race/ethnicity-stratified measures in HEDIS, and conducting data validations on incoming HEDIS data each year. He has also been involved in assessing trending patterns among HEDIS measures and helping develop the new empirical approach to trending determinations. His prior experience includes teaching a diverse array of students and explaining complicated theoretical concepts and empirical insights across wide topical areas relevant to real-world issues. He received several university teaching awards and routinely received above-average ratings on course evaluations. 

Fern McCree
Director, Digital Quality Informatics, NCQA

Continuing Education

This is a non -accredited activity.

Disclosure of Relevant Financial Relationships

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) endorses the Standards of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education which specify that sponsors of continuing medical education activities and presenters at and planners for these activities disclose any relevant financial relationships either party might have with commercial companies whose products or services are discussed in educational presentations.

For sponsors, relevant financial relationships include large research grants, institutional agreements for joint initiatives, substantial gifts, or other relationships that benefit the institution.  For presenters or planning committee members, relevant financial relationships include the receipt of research grants from a commercial company, consultancies, honoraria, travel, or other benefits, or having a self-managed equity interest in a company; or having an immediate family member or partner with such a relationship.

Disclosure of a relationship is not intended to suggest or condone bias in any presentation but is made to provide participants with information that might be of potential importance to their evaluation of a presentation.

Relevant financial relationships exist with the following companies/organizations:

Faculty:

Priya Desai: None
Madison Yaniz: None
Shawn Trivette:  None
Fern McGree: None

Additional Planning Committee Members:
Madison Yaniz: None