Methodology v2
MajorScoring calibration. Same factor spine, refined derivation: regulatory actions are now weighted by severity (marketing and labeling actions count far lighter than safety, quality, or licensing and fraud actions); complaint-skewed indices like the BBB are treated as weak context, not score drivers; third-party data we cannot retrieve is excluded and the score re-normalized over what was assessed, with a published completeness figure, so a provider is never penalized for our retrieval gap; and every adverse finding now requires a primary source.
Impact on live scores
No live provider score changed under this version.
Why we made this change
The launch calibration changed how a raw observation becomes a subscore while the factor set stayed fixed, so scores were already being computed under these rules — this version makes the public label honest. It also makes scores fairer (severity-aware, primary-source-backed) and robust to data we could not retrieve.
The full rationale
Version 2 kept the v1 factor spine exactly as-is and refined how a raw observation becomes a subscore. The set of things we measure did not change; the way we turn evidence into a number did. Because that calibration was already in force when the first scores were computed, we versioned and dated it so the public methodology matches the rules the engine was already using — a calibration made honest, not a new set of factors.
Four rules define the calibration:
- Regulatory actions are weighted by severity. A marketing or labeling action counts far lighter than a safety, quality, contamination, or unlicensed-practice action — and light actions are noted and contextualized rather than treated as a heavy penalty.
- Complaint-skewed indices are treated as weak context, not score drivers. A near-universal low grade on a complaint-mediation index barely discriminates between providers, so it never drives a factor on its own.
- Third-party data we cannot retrieve is excluded, and the score is re-normalized over what was actually assessed, alongside a published completeness figure. A provider is never penalized for a gap in our retrieval — only for its own opacity.
- Every adverse finding requires a primary source. Nothing negative affects a score without a citation a reader can check.
Impact on live scores: none. Because these rules were already applied when scoring began, applying the v2 label moved no published provider score — it made the public label reflect the calibration that was already in effect, and made future scores fairer and more robust to missing data.