On October 13th, CMS publicly released the 2024 Medicare Part C and D Star Ratings. Wakely has quantified the significant decline in 2024 Star Ratings on Quality Bonus Payments, or QBPs, in 2025. The result of our analysis: a drop somewhere between $600 and $700 million in 2025 QBPs. The primary driver of this decline is a change to the 2024 Star Rating program: the adoption of the Tukey outer fence outlier deletion cut point methodology. This change increases Stars measure cut points and depresses measure scores in turn. The analysis and discussion in this whitepaper review all changes to 2024 Overall Star Ratings with a particular focus on the impact of the Tukey methodology change.
