May 31, 2005
NCQA Releases 2004 Annual Report:
The Future in Focus
Report showcases industry leaders, features essays by CMS Administrator Mark McClellan, National Health IT Coordinator David Brailer
The Future In Focus, NCQA's Annual Report for 2004, highlights NCQA's new Quality Plus program. Download (PDF, 1440 k)
WASHINGTON—The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today released its 2004 annual report, The Future in Focus. The report features important essays contributed by two of the nation’s leading, public sector health quality advocates: Mark McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contributes an essay suggesting further expansion of CMS’s pay for performance efforts; and David Brailer, Ph.D., National Health Information Technology Coordinator, writes about the urgent need to move toward a more digitized, wired health care system. Both these themes are central to NCQA’s new, voluntary Quality Plus program which is profiled in detail in the report.
The need for collaboration around quality issues also emerges as a major theme of the report. "Just-in-time information at the point of care, establishing rewards for quality, putting claims information online—these aren’t things you do on your own," said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. "These and other promising strategies will require new levels of collaboration, most notably between patients and providers."
This year’s report also includes numerous examples of industry leaders who have successfully adopted leading edge practices like complex case management and measuring and rewarding physician performance. Also included is a hypothetical case study that illustrates how “systemness” (the adoption of systematic processes for managing the flow of clinical and other information) helps to improve health care. The case study follows “Mrs. G.,” who has diabetes, and compares her health care experience today to the care she might get in a future environment that offers her and her doctors better and more consistent support.
The Future in Focus is now available on NCQA’s Web site at www.ncqa.org. Printed copies of the report will be mailed to organizations that participate in or support NCQA’s programs and activities in the near future.
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 performance measurement tool used by more than 90 percent of the nation’s health plans. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web and the media in order to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices.