NCQA’s Accreditation of New Health Plans (NHP) Program is based on a core set of standards from the Standards and Guidelines for the Accreditation of Managed Care Organizations and is available to health plans that are less than three years old. NHP accreditation evaluates how well a plan manages its clinical and administrative systems in order to continuously improve health care for its members.

NCQA NHP Accreditation consists of both onsite and offsite evaluations conducted by teams of physicians and managed care experts. The Review Oversight Committee (ROC) analyzes the team's findings and assigns an accreditation level based on plan performance against standards for improving health care access and services and practitioner credentialing.