We all spend hours researching big purchases before we’re willing to make an investment. Buying a new car? Need a new laptop? These are purchase decisions that we often invest hours into, scouring the internet, informally polling friends and family, or even paying for a professional’s opinion to guide us in the right direction. 

Making informed healthcare decisions is even more important than finding the right car or laptop. But when care decisions are urgent and need to be made within minutes or hours, we don’t have time to take on days-long research projects to guide us to the right doctor or hospital. Even if we’re simply looking for a new primary care physician, investing hours of time finding the right person can be daunting.

A simple new quality rating system for healthcare providers

With Amino’s latest Quality Scores enhancements and our updated Provider Profiles experience, researching doctors and facilities is simple and fast. We use a familiar A through F rating system to show which providers provide high quality care, making it easy for members to compare care options and determine which provider will offer the best care for their needs. Members can also drill deeper into ratings for quality criteria related to a specific health need—for example, readmission rates for a hospital after an inpatient knee surgery—to ensure safe, appropriate care.

Our A to F quality rating system relies on over 200 quality of care metrics to give a more in-depth picture of provider quality for both physicians and hospitals. The data sources that inform our rating system fall into the following five categories:

1. Physician experience: assess how much experience a physician has treating conditions related to your search term, and how long they’ve been practicing medicine
2. Appropriateness of care: assess whether providers avoid: wasteful care, preventable injuries or complications, and overprescribing practices
3. Third-party quality scores: integrates quality metrics from industry-leading measure sets such as Leapfrog Safety Grades, CMS quality programs, and the National Quality Forum (NQF)
4. Facility quality: includes meaningful measure criteria such as mortality, readmission, safety, and surgery specific-metrics such as patient burns or falls prior to discharge
5. Affiliated physician experience: looks at facilities’ affiliation with individual highly experienced physicians

Smart Match, smart decision

In addition to assigning Quality Scores to individual providers, we’ve also incorporated new quality measures into our Smart Match algorithms for Primary Care, Specialty Care, Inpatient Care, and Outpatient Surgery topics to ensure we guide members to the highest-quality doctors and facilities as they search for care. Providers now must have a quality score of A or B to be considered a Smart Match.

Provider Profiles: your one-stop research shop

While our new at-a-glance A to F provider Quality Scores make it easy to quickly narrow down a list of potential providers to a few top candidates, our updated Provider Profiles help members dig into the details and ultimately select a doctor and facility on the Amino Guidance platform. We’ve made a number of design updates to our Provider Profile pages to make it even easier to evaluate whether a provider is a good fit for a member’s needs—and we’ll even book an appointment with that provider for members once they’ve found the right option. 

Here are some of the exciting updates in this release:

• New Smart Match Summary section at the top of each Profile shows aggregate cost ratings and quality scores, and highlights whether a doctor or facility is a Smart Match. This helps members see at-a-glance if a provider is a good choice for their needs. 
• New Quality of Care section shows a composite quality score for the provider, as well as ratings for specific category measures relevant to a member's search topic, providing the information members need to make confident care choices. 
• Smart Match recommendations and booking options are now available when members search for a doctor by name, making it easy to evaluate their current care team and request appointments when they need them. 
• Updated booking module stays on the page as you scroll so members can request an appointment as soon as they’ve finished researching.
• New profile photos added for over 350,000 doctors so members can see their smiling faces before their first appointment.
• Provider information has been reorganized so members can skim for what matters to them and make a decision quickly.

Informed decisions, less research, more time for what matters

When it comes to healthcare, we know confidence is just as important as convenience. With simple-to-understand Quality Scores and revamped Provider Profiles that give members everything they need to make a decision quickly, finding a great doctor or facility will be easier than ever.

If you already have an Amino account, these updates are available today. Make sure to log in and explore these exciting new enhancements! 

For more details on the measures and methodology behind our new Quality Score enhancements, visit the Amino Help Center.