Definitions for "Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set"
A program of evaluation designed to assist employers and other health purchasers to compare health plans by examining a core set of performance measures. This system is one of the first attempts to objectively measure the quality of MCOs and has been widely criticized as being insufficiently focused on clinical outcomes.
Measures, now part of the NCQA Accreditation process, used by all health plans to evaluate performance in areas ranging from preventative care and consumer experience to heart disease and cancer. With HEDIS, purchasers and consumers can reliably compare the quality of managed care plans.
The result of a coordinated development effort by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to provide a group of performance measures that gives employers some objective information with which to evaluate health plans and hold them accountable; HEDIS helps ensure that plans and purchasers of care are speaking the same language when they are comparing value and accountability. (HEDIS(tm) is a registered trademark of NCQA.)