How to read a Trust Health Score without over-reading it
What the number measures, what Coverage Confidence is telling you, and the three mistakes clinics make when a score moves.
Published
A Trust Health Score is a summary of what the public record currently says about a clinic. It is deterministic and versioned, which means two people looking at the same period see the same number, and a change in the number is a change in the world rather than a change in the tool.
Read the coverage before you read the score
Coverage Confidence is reported separately and it is the first thing to look at. A score computed over eleven public items is not comparable to one computed over eleven hundred, and treating them as equivalent is the single most common analytical error in reputation work. Where coverage is insufficient, ClinicRadar suppresses the number entirely rather than showing it with a caveat that nobody reads.
Three mistakes when a score moves
- Reacting to a one-week movement that sits inside normal variation. Look at the trend and the item count behind it before acting.
- Attributing a movement to your most recent change. The evidence list tells you what actually moved; assume nothing.
- Comparing across formula versions. The version is printed next to the number for a reason — a change of version is not a change of reputation.
What the score is not
It is not a clinical quality measure, and it must never be presented as one. It measures what the public record says about a business, which is a different thing from how well that business treats patients. Both matter; only one of them is measurable from public sources.