Frequently Asked Questions

What is Healthscore CT?

Healthscore CT is an online healthcare quality scorecard and healthcare cost estimator tool developed by the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy to give consumers, policymakers, payers, and employers access to the resources they need to make informed healthcare choices and policy decisions.

Who created the Healthscore CT quality scorecard?

The healthcare scorecard is a project of the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy (OHS) in partnership with the OHS Quality Council, which provided oversight and advice on attribution, benchmarks, and ratings. Members of the Quality Council include healthcare providers, health insurance experts, patient advocates, and other experts from across the healthcare and related sectors in Connecticut. The quality scorecard measures are endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF). NQF helps ensure that quality measures are well designed and scientifically valid. The technical development and production of the scorecard was undertaken by UConn Health in its role as subcontractor to OHS. The data has undergone significant testing by evaluators at UConn Health to help ensure that the results are valid and the measure calculations have been shared with providers in advance of publication.

Who are you getting the information from?

Healthscore CT encompasses the individual, small group, and the fully insured plans, all regulated by the State of Connecticut, and state employees, a self-funded plan. It does not yet include Medicaid, with exception of state employees. Healthscore CT gives consumers access to data on the quality of healthcare treatment and prevention, disease management, and behavioral health for provider networks and federally-qualified health centers operating throughout Connecticut. A self-funded plan means a plan that is regulated by the federal government, it’s usually a health plan issued by a large employer. To find out what type of plan you have, ask your human resources department at your employer or call the number on the back of your insurance card.

Where does the information for the Healthscore CT cost estimator come from?

The cost estimator pulls data from insurance claims in the All-Payer Claims Database. The high, median, and low costs reflect the payments made by insurers for a particular routine and uneventful procedure.

Is Healthscore CT information trustworthy?

In building Healthscore CT, OHS used quality measures that have been endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF). NQF helps ensure that quality measures are well designed and scientifically valid. In addition, the data has undergone significant testing to ensure that it is reliable and the measure calculations have been shared with providers in advance of publication.

How does Healthscore CT help me?

You can search, sort, and filter results by healthcare organization, health topic, and quality rating. Having access to quality ratings help people make the best decisions about where to get their care.

Healthscore CT also makes healthcare costs more transparent—an important step in reining in high costs throughout the healthcare system.,

Understanding your choices when it comes to healthcare helps lower out-of-pocket costs. More broadly, making better health decisions lead to a healthier population, fewer disparities in care and outcomes, a more productive workforce, and a stronger economy.

How does Healthscore CT help providers?

Providers can use the site to check their quality and cost ratings and better understand of where they fall with respect to the state’s average.

Will Healthscore CT impact health policy?

Policymakers and advocates can use Healthscore CT to get a global view of healthcare quality and cost performance in Connecticut. Quality ratings and cost data can inform statewide healthcare quality improvement initiatives and policies.

How are providers scored without taking each individual patient into consideration?

A score is typically the percent of patients who received a particular service (e.g., well-visit or diabetes A1C test) or outcome (hospital readmission) described in the quality measure. We then compare the score for the healthcare quality measure to the statewide average. The star ratings illustrate whether the healthcare organization’s level of performance for a given measure is below the state average, average, or above average.

What do I do if my provider scores poorly? Does that mean I’m not getting good care? What if my provider scored well but I think they are terrible?

Healthscore CT scores the whole provider network or healthcare organization, not individual providers within an organization. The scores reflect the combined performance across providers and patients; they do not reflect the quality or experience of any individual patient.

How was the healthcare scorecard funded?

This project was supported by Funding Opportunity Number CMS-1G1-14-001 (State Innovation Model Initiative) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The contents provided are solely the responsibility of OHS and do not necessarily represent the official views of HHS or any of its agencies.

The SIM funding supports the development of payment and service delivery model reform to promote healthier people, better care and smarter spending.

How are scores calculated?

All of the data is from all of the patients whose care is attributed to a healthcare organization to calculate performance scores for each healthcare quality measure. The scores provided are specific to the type of health plan or insurance used to pay for the care delivered to patients.

Therefore, based on payer type, a healthcare organization may have three performance scores for a quality measure: Commercial, Medicare and Medicaid.

For the Scorecard, Commercial includes the All-Payers Claims Database (APCD) data from fully-insured health plans and the State of Connecticut’s self-funded health plan for state employees. The APCD does not include data from other self-funded plans where employers pay directly for employee healthcare expenses rather than buying an insurance policy.

For providers:

We invite the leadership of healthcare organizations to verify lists of their healthcare providers and to provide feedback on the attribution method. Rated healthcare organizations may also contact us if they believe there has been an error in attribution or score calculation.

To add your healthcare organization or if you are a provider with questions, please contact

Have a question?

Email us at for assistance.