Kaiser Hawaii Medicare Plan Earns Highest Rating

Kaiser Permanente Hawaii earned the highest rating of five out of five stars for its 2017-18 Medicare program by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Kaiser Permanente has been recognized with a five-star rating six times since 2012, and is the only 2018 plan in Hawai‘i to receive the highest overall score.

The Medicare star quality rating for 2018 is based on plans’ performance in up to 45 care and service quality measures across nine categories.

CMS assigns a rating to individual Medicare health plans ranging from one (lowest) to five (highest) stars based on measures related to staying healthy, managing chronic conditions, member experience, customer service and pharmacy services.

Five-star plans can participate in a Special Enrollment Period and continue to enroll individual (direct pay) Medicare members between the annual enrollment window, from Dec. 8, 2017, to Nov. 30, 2018.

“Our integrated model allows us to provide coordinated and patient-center care, delivering better outcomes and a positive patient experience,” said Linda Pu‘u, RN, vice president, Quality, Safety and Care Experience, Kaiser Permanente Hawaii. “Our staff and physicians work as a team to provide exceptional care that helps Hawai‘i’s seniors stay healthy.”

The CMS star ratings follows a recent recognition by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, a leading healthcare quality assurance organization. Earlier this year, the NCQA Health Insurance Plan Ratings 2017-18 awarded Kaiser Permanente’s Medicare plan a rating of five out of five, the highest rating in the state.

Data for the Medicare star quality rating is drawn from the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS), the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS), Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) and CMS administrative data from audits, complaints and “secret shopping.”

For more information about the CMS star ratings, visit medicare.gov.

To learn more about the star ratings and see Kaiser Permanente’s ratings by region, visit kp.org/medicarestars.

For more information about Kaiser Permanente, go online.