July 1, 2004

AS NCQA SURVEYS GO ON-LINE, PROCESS CHANGES CHARACTER

Industry's first Web-based survey system features new tools, immediate feedback; process is simpler, more streamlined

WASHINGTON- The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today began surveys for a number of different types of organizations and individual physicians using its new Interactive Survey System (ISS), a web-based system that guides participants through a survey, provides feedback along the way and trims countless hours off the previous paper-based process. The ISS is expected to help organizations and individuals start making improvements more quickly since they won't have to wait weeks or months for feedback. Health care organizations, medical groups and doctors from across the country will use the system for future surveys.

"Our evaluation programs require organizations and doctors to cover a lot of territory in the name of quality," said NCQA Chief Operating Officer Esther Emard. "With the ISS, we've built for our customers a 'survey superhighway' to help them through the process. They'll still be required to meet all of NCQA's rigorous standards and go through an on-site survey, but it will be a more streamlined and focused experience."

The switch to the ISS affects essentially all NCQA's programs, including its core accreditation and certification programs and the more recently introduced recognition programs for physicians and medical groups. Among the many notable features that will be available to survey participants:

• A Results function, which shows preliminary scores by element and standard.
• ISS-generated Recommendations, which give applicants suggestions on how to improve performance on certain elements.
• A Document Library, which helps organizations manage, update and track changes to the potentially hundreds of documents that may be submitted as supporting materials for a survey.
• A Private Notes feature that serves as an easy-to-access forum that is off-limits to NCQA surveyors where an organizations' staff can communicate with one another about survey-related matters.

A survey of early ISS users, many of whom have been preparing for surveys with the new tool, was overwhelmingly positive. "The ISS makes managing the survey process easier from start to finish," said Kathy Barfoot, National Manager of Accreditation, UnitedHealthcare. "And a better survey process makes NCQA Accreditation fundamentally more valuable -- we're more focused on making improvements rather than just getting through the survey."

The same sentiment was echoed by users at several other organizations, including Dennis Roy, National Quality Director, CIGNA HealthCare. "A medical record is more useful and ten times easier to work with when it's electronic as opposed to paper - the same is true of accreditation," said Roy. "With the ISS we can shift a lot of our energy from organizing and moving paper and generally getting through the Accreditation process to taking advantage of what we've learned and making ourselves an even better organization. Now that we're using the new system, we would never go back to paper."

Among the most attractive advantages of the ISS for NCQA's larger clients is that it will allow some corporate organizations to remotely assist their regional offices in preparing for an accreditation survey, thus potentially reducing travel costs and shipping expenses. Previously, binders of information were regularly shipped cross-country and much of the accreditation preparation support provided by corporate office staff was done on site.

ISS-based surveys still include an on-site visit by an NCQA survey team. Following the initial or "off-site" portion of the survey (during which NCQA surveyors review an organization's completed Survey Tool), surveyors typically spend two days on site validating key information and conducting interviews with senior management staff.

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 offers recognition programs for physicians and physician groups. NCQA also manages the evolution of HEDIS, the tool used by most health care organizations to measure and report on their performance on key aspects of care and service. NCQA makes health care quality information available free of charge through the Web and media in order to help consumers and employers make informed health care purchasing decisions.

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