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Guidance for sponsors of consumer reports on health care quality

Describing Measures in User-Friendly Ways

Most people are not familiar with even quite common health care quality measures. The typical “name” of most clinical measures is in medical language that many people do not understand or may actually misunderstand. At this stage in the development of comparative quality reports for the public, sponsors need to take extra steps to ensure that users fully and accurately understand the measures being presented.

This section describes how to:

• Label Measures in Plain English
• Define Complex Measures
• Explain Why the Information Matters
• Describe How the Plan or Provider Can Influence the Measure
• Explain What’s Better: A High Score or a Low Score
• Describe (and Legitimize) the Source of the Data
• Present Only Essential Information on Technical Issues and Caveats

Coming up with labels and definitions and testing them is time consuming. If you are using commonly reported measures, you may want to begin by looking at existing reports and talking to their developers to see if you really need to start from scratch. In some cases, measure developers have provided tested labels and definitions.

Learn how to test measure labels and definitions with your audience in The Purpose and Process of Cognitive Testing.

Also in "Translate Data Into Information"

• Why Good Presentation Matters
• Generating Scores that Show Differences in Performance
• Describing Measures in User-friendly Ways
• Organizing Measures to Reduce Information Overload
• Choosing a Point of Comparison
• Displaying the Data
• Taking Advantage of Web Functionalities