The Medicare Publishing Excellence Standards (MPES) are a public framework designed to improve transparency, trust, education, consumer experience, and information quality across the Medicare ecosystem.
These standards were created to help Medicare health plan organizations publish information that is easier for beneficiaries to understand, easier for search engines to interpret, and easier for AI systems to accurately represent.
The framework is voluntary, educational, and vendor-neutral.
It is intended for organizations that publish Medicare plan information, including independent agents, insurance agencies, field marketing organizations (FMOs), Medicare publishers, technology providers, and consumer advocacy organizations.
Why These Standards Were Created
Millions of Americans rely on the internet to make important healthcare decisions.
Unfortunately, Medicare health plan information is often fragmented, inconsistent, difficult to verify, or buried behind marketing experiences that prioritize lead generation over education and helpfulness.
At the same time, search engines and AI systems increasingly act as intermediaries between consumers and the organizations that serve them.
When websites lack transparency, structure, or clear ownership, both people and machines struggle to understand the information being presented.
The Medicare Publishing Excellence Standards were created to address this challenge.
The goal is not marketing. The goal is understanding.
By encouraging better publishing practices, the framework seeks to improve the quality, transparency, and usefulness of Medicare information available to the public.
What the Standards Measure
The framework is organized into seven domains:
- Transparency
- Human Trust
- Medicare Education
- Local Medicare Publishing
- Consumer Experience
- Structured Medicare Publishing
- Medicare Publishing Excellence
Together, these domains provide a practical framework for evaluating how effectively an organization communicates with consumers and how easily its information can be understood by both humans and machines.
Who Maintains the Standards
The Medicare Publishing Excellence Standards are developed and maintained by MedicarePlans.com as a public educational resource.
MedicarePlans.com is an independent, non-commercial Medicare information platform dedicated to improving public access to Medicare plan data, educational resources, and consumer decision-support tools.
The standards initiative reflects the same philosophy that guides MedicarePlans.com itself:
- Transparency over ambiguity
- Education over promotion
- Public understanding over marketing complexity
- Accessible information for both humans and machines
About the Author
The framework was created by David W. Bynon, Healthcare AI Governance Architect and Medicare Systems Steward.
For more than four decades, David has worked in technology, information systems, publishing, and healthcare information management. Through Medicare.org, MedicareWire, MedicarePlans.com, and related initiatives, he has focused on improving how complex Medicare information is organized, published, and delivered to consumers.
The Medicare Publishing Excellence Standards represent an effort to document and share practical publishing practices that improve clarity, trust, and consumer understanding throughout the Medicare ecosystem.
A Public Resource
The Medicare Publishing Excellence Standards are published as a free public resource.
The framework may be referenced, discussed, implemented, and shared by organizations seeking to improve the quality of their Medicare publishing practices.
As the Medicare ecosystem continues to evolve, the standards will be updated to reflect new technologies, publishing methods, consumer expectations, and information delivery models.
Better publishing leads to better understanding. Better understanding leads to better decisions.