The Report Card Compendium is a searchable directory of over 200 sources of comparative information on the quality of health plans, hospitals, medical groups, individual physicians, nursing homes, and other providers of care. In every case, one of the primary purposes of these reports is to meet the information needs of health care consumers. The Compendium provides profiles of both printed and Web-based sources of information, with links to Web sites and sample pages where available.

The term "report cards": For the purposes of this Compendium, the term "report cards" refers broadly to a wide variety of information sources and tools that enable consumers to compare the quality and, in some cases, other characteristics of health plans or providers. The developers of the Compendium appreciate that some sponsors and developers of this kind of information do not approve of this term, but we decided to use it because it is concise and universally understood.

Access to real data: The Compendium itself does not include the actual quantitative data found in any given report. Moreover, all examples accessible through the Compendium are meant for illustrative purposes only. However, if you follow a link to a Web-based report or a sample page, you may see the comparative data provided in that report. The report card's sponsor granted permission for us to either link to their site or provide a sample page. The only exceptions were report cards whose sponsors no longer exist. Because the Compendium includes reports from the last 10 years, some of the information contained in the reports is no longer current.

The Compendium includes reports that meet the following criteria:

• They are designed for consumers, defined as enrollees, employees, beneficiaries of Medicare or Medicaid, or the public at large.
• They are available to consumers. However, they do not have to be available to all consumers or available for free.
• They include comparative data on quality for more than one health care organization.
• They provide information about one of the following types of health care providers:
  • Health plans.
  • Hospitals (inpatient and outpatient care).
  • Medical groups/clinics.
  • Individual physicians.
  • Managed behavioral health organizations.
  • Nursing homes.
  • Home health agencies.
  • Dialysis facilities.

Publication date is not a criterion: Since these reports are meant to illustrate various ways to report information, the collection is not limited to current documents and tools. The oldest entries date back to 1996. In some cases, there are multiple entries for the same sponsor because the reporting strategy changed over time.

The Compendium excludes the following types of reports:

• Reports on one institution’s performance, even if shown relative to a benchmark of some kind.
• Reports with comparative information on cost or other measures not directly related to quality (e.g., administrative measures, such as the number of beds in a hospital).

The Compendium is open to any organization that produces and disseminates reports with comparative quality information for consumers. Examples of report sponsors include public purchasers, employer coalitions, State agencies, health plans, provider associations, media organizations, health care quality organizations, and vendors.

However, the Compendium does not include vendors that develop reports on behalf of other organizations unless they also provide a separate report directly to consumers. Several reports developed by vendors for others are in the Compendium, but each is presented as a report of the sponsoring organization, not the vendor.

Note: Inclusion in the Compendium does not constitute an endorsement of any kind by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Each entry includes information on:

• Types of measures included in the report (e.g. patient experience measures, process measures, volume measures); and
• Presentation strategies used in the report (e.g. bar graphs, trending information, symbols).

A profile of each report card provides a comprehensive description, including the geographic coverage, the availability of educational information or a decision-support tool, comments on the measures and presentation strategies, and other details. In most cases, links to Web-based reports are also provided.