But many plan executives believe the way the media use Quality Compass data is unsophisticated and unfair, and they blame NCQA for making that possible. You portray performance in a certain way, Newsweek portrays it in another way. NCQA doesn't adjust the data by demographics or by type of plan. Many other companies declined to participate in any way. We believe that, in many cases, our true quality performance . . .
Accountability drives performance.
Many plans prefer not to report publicly, O'Kane suggests, because they were unhappy about how they did last year. While perhaps unassailable as a general conclusion, the statement does not necessarily hold true for individual plans. Last year, for example, two Prudential plans received the maximum four stars in the U.S. News rankings, and many other plans absent this year got a respectable three stars. NCQA's larger problem is that accreditation status and performance data are still minor factors to most employers. Far more significant, the employers said, are the number and quality of a plan's physicians, employee satisfaction, and cost.