Women's Health

This category shows HMO quality scores for topics that are important parts of helping women stay healthy and finding disease early. A good sign of a quality HMO is high marks in screening women of certain ages for breast and cervical cancer. Finding these cancers early is key to preventing serious illness or death. Quality HMOs send screening reminders to women, make it easy to get screening tests and help doctors to teach members the value of cancer screening. The best HMOs and their doctors, communicate with patients about common health risks — like sexually transmitted disease in younger, sexually active women — and test those patients who are more likely to get such infections like Chlamydia. Quality HMOs see that pregnant women get regular checkups during pregnancy. These visits can uncover problems — like high blood pressure — that threaten the health of the mother or the baby. Also, the HMO and its doctors should see that the woman and baby get a check-up shortly after the birth.