Understanding Composite Analytics

Composites provide a structured view of patient experience performance based on responses collected through Protoqual surveys.

Rather than presenting a single score, Composites organize patient feedback into CAHPS-aligned categories, helping teams understand how patients experience different aspects of care and where attention may be needed.

Composites allow organizations to:

  • Review current patient experience performance
  • Track changes over time
  • Compare results across different parts of the organization

These analytics help healthcare teams identify strengths, recognize operational challenges, and focus efforts where they matter most.

What Composites Measure

Composites reflect patient responses across several important areas of care commonly measured through CAHPS (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) surveys.

These surveys ask patients to report how often key aspects of care occurred during their experience with providers and staff.

Typical patient experience categories include:

  • Provider Communication
  • Timely Access
  • Care Coordination
  • Office Staff
  • Provider Rating

These categories represent key aspects of the patient experience in outpatient and ambulatory care settings and are widely used across healthcare to monitor quality and patient-centered care.

Composites organize survey results into these categories so teams can easily understand which areas of the care experience are performing well and which may require attention.

Why Composites Matter

Composites help organizations move beyond individual patient comments and understand broader patterns in patient experience.

Tracking these metrics helps teams:

  • Identify strengths in patient care
  • Recognize operational challenges
  • Monitor changes over time
  • Focus attention on what matters most to patients

When combined with patient feedback and insights, Composites provide a clear view of how patients experience care across the organization.

Composite Views

Composites organize patient experience analytics into three main views:

  • Summary
  • History
  • Comparison

Each view provides a different way to explore patient experience data.

Summary

The Summary view provides a quick overview of current patient experience performance.

In this view, you can see:

  • The Overall PX Score
  • Scores for each patient experience category
  • How each category contributes to the overall picture
  • Whether scores increased or decreased compared to the previous month

This view helps leaders quickly understand where performance is strongest and where attention may be needed.

From the Summary view, users can also open individual categories to explore the survey questions that influence each score.

Viewing Individual Categories

Selecting a category opens a more detailed view of that area of patient experience.

For example, selecting Care Coordination displays:

  • The survey questions included in that category
  • The score for each question
  • The survey source for each question
  • A breakdown of patient responses

This allows teams to move from a high-level category view to the specific survey questions influencing the results.

Question Breakdown

Within a category, each survey question can be expanded to display a response breakdown.

This breakdown shows:

  • Each answer option
  • The number of responses
  • The percentage of responses for each answer

This helps explain why a category appears the way it does, not just what the score is.

History

The History view shows how Composite category results change over time.

This allows organizations to:

  • Monitor patient experience trends month by month
  • Identify improvements or declines
  • Evaluate the impact of operational changes

Depending on your organization’s setup, results may be available at different levels, such as:

  • Organization
  • Groups
  • Practices
  • Locations

Tracking trends over time helps teams understand whether changes in workflows, staffing, or communication are influencing the patient experience.

Comparison

The Comparison view allows organizations to compare Composite results across different parts of the organization.

Depending on your configuration, comparisons may include:

  • Groups
  • Practices
  • Locations

Comparison views help leaders:

  • Identify stronger or weaker performing teams
  • Understand variation across the organization
  • Recognize patterns that may require attention

Data may be displayed in both chart view and table view, allowing users to explore the information in the format that works best for their analysis.


Benchmark Indicators

Some Composite views include benchmark indicators that help provide context for interpreting results.

These indicators show how performance compares to common benchmark ranges such as:

  • 10th percentile
  • 25th percentile
  • 50th percentile
  • 75th percentile
  • 90th percentile

The position of a score within these ranges helps show whether performance falls closer to lower, middle, or higher benchmark levels.

To learn more about how PX scores and percentiles work, see:

Understanding PX Scores and Percentiles

Missing Data or Excluded Groups

You may occasionally see a message indicating that a group or location was excluded.

This usually means that no surveys were completed for that entity during the selected time period, so a Composite result cannot be calculated.

You may also notice gaps in the History view when no surveys were completed during certain months.

Sending surveys consistently helps maintain a more complete performance timeline.