November 9, 2005
NCQA Certifies GE Healthcare Record-Keeping Software to Help Track Diabetes Care
Centricity Physician Office first to receive Physician Recognition Software Certification; software can help doctors pursue Diabetes Physician Recognition Program
WASHINGTON—The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today certified the first electronic health record (EHR) software shown to support doctors who wish to pursue the NCQA/American Diabetes Association Diabetes Physician Recognition Program (DPRP). GE’s Centricity Physician Office system was rigorously evaluated to ensure that it could accurately report clinical results to physicians interested in applying for recognition under the DPRP. While use of NCQA-certified software is not mandatory, physicians and medical groups may find that using certified EHR software significantly streamlines the application process.
“Physicians participating in recognition and pay-for-performance programs need tools that can help compile and report clinical information quickly and accurately,” said Margaret E. O’Kane, NCQA President. “Physician Recognition Software Certification identifies systems that do just that. GE is to be commended for coming forward, and we encourage other software vendors to do the same.”
The DPRP is a voluntary program that recognizes physicians that provide high-quality diabetes care. To qualify for Recognition, physicians are required to pull a random sample of their patient files and calculate the percentage of those patients who received recommended screening exams (such as eye exams and blood pressure checks) and had certain key clinical outcomes (such as cholesterol and blood sugar levels) in a healthy range. Doctors who meet established performance thresholds earn Recognition. Compatible EHR software can substantially streamline the data gathering process and help physicians compute preliminary results for comparison to the thresholds for Recognition. EHR systems are certified by processing a series of random “test cases” and comparing their output to the expected results based on DPRP requirements.
“Centricity Physician Office helps reduce the ‘heavy lifting’ of data collection and lets doctors do what they do best—improve the quality of patient care,” said Vishal Wanchoo, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Information Technology. “Achieving NCQA’s Physician Recognition Software Certification demonstrates GE’s commitment to address the biggest challenges in healthcare by developing transformational medical and information technologies.”
The Physician Recognition Software Certification program currently assesses EHR systems for their compatibility with the DPRP; however, it does not certify other areas of EHR performance, such as interoperability or security, and is not an audit of the validity of medical record data. In the future, the program may be expanded to include testing for compatibility with the NCQA/American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Heart/Stroke Recognition Program and NCQA’s Physician Practice Connections program.
In addition to GE, Isprit Systems has come forward as a Physician Recognition Software Certification early adopter; testing is scheduled for early 2006. EHR vendors interested in participating in the certification program are encouraged to contact Allison Klein at 202-955-1703.
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 manages the evolution of HEDIS®, the tool the nation’s health plans use to measure and report on their performance. 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.