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Medicare Advantage, Part D, MedicaidL2 · v1.5.1 · read-only

get_star_decomposition

Get Star Decomposition

What it answers

How a contract's star is built, and what moves it to the next line. For one Medicare Advantage contract and rating year: for the Overall, Part C and Part D summaries, the raw score (the weighted mean of the measure stars), the categorical adjustment (CAI), the reward factor, the score before rounding, the published star and the recomputed one, the cushion above the line the star was earned at and the gap to the next half-star line (and to 3.75, which rounds to 4.0). Then every measure: score, star, weight, direction, the next star's cut point and the distance to it in the measure's own units, and what one more star on it adds to each summary's raw score; plus the shortest list of one-star gains that closes the gap to the next line.

ARGUMENTS: contract_id (required, e.g. H5216), rating_year (default the newest held for the contract), limit (measure rows, default 60).

RETURNS value.summary (contract, rating_year, pays_in, parts: one block per summary with its decomposition, gaps and path) and value.measures (one row per measure).

RULES THE TOOL ENFORCES: the arithmetic is CMS's (the raw score over the measure set CMS used, picked so the weights add up to the recompute engine's total; the Overall leaves out the two Part D measures that duplicate Part C); one more star adds weight / total weight to the raw score; the path holds the CAI and the reward factor constant and says so; distances are in the measure's own units and direction (for a lower-is-better measure the score must fall); survey (CAHPS) cut points are approximate, because CMS also tests significance and reliability; improvement measures have no cut point. The recomputed star is the engine's, the published star is CMS's; where they differ the row says why.

FLOOR BANDS: where CMS printed NA for a measure's lowest star bands (some measures in RY2015 and RY2018-2021), every score earns at least that star; the measure's floor_cut says so and it cannot be lost.

SOURCE: CMS Part C and D Star Ratings Data Tables and Technical Notes, through Vlada's recompute engine, which reproduces 98.4% of every star CMS published (RY2015-2027) exactly.

Inputs

contract_id
string · required
limit
integer · optional
rating_year
integer · optional

Call it

From an agent: connect the Vlada MCP once (one click for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code) and ask in plain English; the agent selects get_star_decomposition when the question fits. From code: the same tool over REST with an API key. The schema endpoint needs no key.

curl -X POST https://api.vladahealth.com/v1/tools/get_star_decomposition \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VLADA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"contract_id":"<contract_id>"}'
curl https://api.vladahealth.com/v1/tools/get_star_decomposition/schema      # the JSON schema, no auth
# MCP endpoint (Streamable HTTP): https://mcp.vladahealth.com/mcp

What comes back

Typed rows plus provenance on every answer: the public source file, its vintage, the methodology, and a response_hash you can replay. Prove and replay tools turn any number into a re-runnable receipt. A number the data cannot support comes back as “not in the data”, never as zero.

Sources behind it

  • medicare_silver.stars_ratings_measure
  • medicare_silver.dim_stars_measures
  • medicare_silver.stars_ratings_summary
  • medicare_silver.stars_cai
  • medicare_semantic.dim_stars_measure_identity_v7

tables: medicare_silver.stars_ratings_measure · medicare_silver.dim_stars_measures · medicare_silver.stars_ratings_summary · medicare_silver.stars_cai

views: medicare_semantic.stars_summary_recomputed_v10 · medicare_semantic.dim_stars_measure_identity_v7

Known limits

No gaps recorded for this tool. Absence of a recorded gap is not a claim of complete coverage; the answer itself says what it covers.

As of the 2026-10-19 build of the served surface · machine-readable catalog · the live server may run a different version; the schema endpoint above is authoritative for what is deployed.