Quality Measures Declined Statewide in 2020, According to Report

March 31, 2022

Not surprisingly, given the pandemic, statewide performance on several healthcare measures declined in 2020, according to a new report from MN Community Measurement (MNCM).  

The Minnesota Health Care Quality Report: Results for Care Delivered in 2020 includes statewide and medical group performance on measures for preventive care, care for chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease, depression care, and other measures. 

The most recent results come from data reported to MNCM in 2021, covering services received by patients in 2020.  

Highlights include: 

• There continues to be significant variation in performance across medical groups. For many measures, the gap between scores of the lowest and highest performing medical groups is more than 50 percentage points.  

• Statewide performance fell for most measures in 2020, likely a reflection of significant disruptions in care due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Measures showing the largest declines in statewide performance were Controlling High Blood Pressure (-12.2 percentage points), Osteoporosis Management in Women Who Had a Fracture (-11.4 percentage points) and PHQ-9/PHQ-9M Utilization for Adults (-8.8 percentage points). 

• Recovery from the impacts of the pandemic will require outreach to patients who missed important preventive care or chronic disease care, along with concerted efforts to fill gaps in data that are needed for ongoing follow-up and management of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, asthma, and depression. 

The report includes performance data for approximately 150 medical groups that operate about 1,000 clinics in Minnesota and border communities in neighboring states. A new online Dynamic Tables reporting tool makes it easier to compare, filter, and sort data included in the report by medical group. Because of pandemic-related disruptions to care delivery and operations in 2020, MNCM chose not to publish results for individual clinics this year. Clinic-level public reporting will resume with 2021 performance data. The Dynamic Tables reporting tool includes data for 2019 and 2020 and can be accessed here.