Accountable Care Organization Accreditation

 NCQA ACO Accreditation helps health care organizations demonstrate their ability to improve quality, reduce costs and coordinate patient care. Built from our successful patient-centered medical home (PCMH) recognition program, NCQA’s ACO standards and guidelines incorporate whole-person care coordination throughout the health care system.

Is your organization eligible to apply for NCQA’s ACO Accreditation program? Find out.

Automatic Credit Is Available for NCQA-Recognized Patient-Centered Medical Homes: PCMH Recognition automatic credit is awarded to organizations that apply for NCQA ACO Accreditation and have 70 percent or more of their patients attributed to NCQA-Recognized PCMH practices.

Why Choose NCQA ACO Accreditation?

Lessons From the First Accredited ACOs

Transparent: NCQA Accreditation provides independent evaluation of an organization’s ability to coordinate care and be accountable for high-quality, efficient, patient-centered care that is expected from ACOs.

Flexible: Like many our accreditation and recognition programs, ACO Accreditation is not prescriptive. NCQA ACO Accreditation has different levels that demonstrate varying degrees of readiness to be ACOs.

Respected: NCQA ACO Accreditation was developed by a consensus-driven process that was informed by public comment and pilot testing. The result is a program that meets the needs of patients, consumers, private purchasers and public payers.

Relevant: NCQA Accreditation aligns with many expectations of providers, consumers, and private and public purchasers (e.g., Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [CMS] programs, including the Medicare Shared Savings Program [MSSP] and [Pioneer]).

Progressive: NCQA revises and updates accreditation standards regularly, reflecting clinical advances, incorporating evolving stakeholder needs and continuously improving program administration for realistic health care solutions.

ACO accreditation includes two major components:

• Standards that evaluate ACO structure and processes. Learn more.
• ACO HEDIS evaluates an organization’s capability to report performance results. Learn more.

Send questions about ACO Accreditation to aco@ncqa.org. 

ACO Policy Updates