QUALITY REPORTING HIGHLIGHTS PROPOSED ADDITIONS
TO NCQA DISEASE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
Public Comment Through June 23
WASHINGTON -- The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today released for public comment changes to its Disease Management (DM) Accreditation and Certification products that include the addition of voluntary quality reporting requirements for five specific conditions.
Disease management programs are used by health plans, medical groups, employers and other entities as a means to improve the health of people who live with chronic conditions. NCQA evaluates DM programs and awards Accreditation and Certification to those that meet rigorous standards.
The proposed quality measures address dimensions of care for people with asthma, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, and ischemic vascular disease. NCQA also proposes to add preventive measures that would apply to all five conditions.
“Disease management organizations provide vital support to the millions of Americans affected by chronic illnesses and the practitioners who treat them,” said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. “The addition of quality measurement will help patients, employers and health plans make decisions based on the performance of DM programs to improve health.”
Additional changes to the standards that assess the structure and processes of disease management programs focus on care coordination, data integration, measurement, quality improvement and transparency in reporting. One proposed new standard requires organizations to report information on efficiency measures to clients including detailed information on how the results were calculated.
NCQA also proposes elimination of two evaluation options, the Contact Certification option, designed for organizations such as DM call centers, as well as the Practitioner-Oriented Accreditation option, which is designed for programs dealing only with practitioners.
Members of the public are invited to comment on the proposed changes through June 23. Public comment materials are available for review on NCQA’s Web site www.ncqa.org. After pilot testing of the proposed changes and approval from its Board of Directors, NCQA will publish the updates to its Disease Management Accreditation and Certification programs this coming December; the new standards will take effect on July 1, 2010.
NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations and recognizes physicians in key clinical areas. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web, media and data licensing agreements in order to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices.
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