NEW NCQA PROGRAM TO EVALUATE HEALTH PROMOTION

Product suite to evaluate broad range of wellness, health management services; public comment through June 30

WASHINGTON— The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today released for public comment proposed standards and measures for a new Wellness and Health Promotion (WHP) product evaluation suite. The program will examine organizations that provide services to employers and health plans that seek to help employees and other participants better manage their own health. Nearly two-thirds of employers in the United States offer such services, including health coaching, smoking cessation and obesity management programs.

“The three biggest contributors to rising health costs and declining health in America—smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise—are avoidable risks. Effective wellness programs lay out a clear, achievable approach to help people make healthy decisions every day,” said Patricia Barrett, NCQA Vice President for Product Development. “This new program will help employers safeguard the health and productivity of their employees by choosing the best programs available.”

The programs proposed today reflect the wide variety of health promotion services currently offered in the market. The WHP product suite includes a broad-based accreditation program for organizations that offer comprehensive wellness services as well as certification for organizations that only offer specific components such as health appraisals and self-management tools. NCQA is also proposing a separate accreditation program for organizations that offer stand-alone weight management or smoking cessation programs.

“Employee health management is quickly becoming an accepted practice among an increasing number of employers. At the same time, the field has become more complex and there may be questions of accountability”, said Bill Whitmer, President and CEO of the Health Enhancement Research Organization, a coalition of employers and others dedicated to promoting prevention and disease management. “Accurately defining program quality, establishing standards and holding organizations accountable constitutes a major step forward in our shared effort to control health costs, manage work performance and improve employee well-being.”

“Risk factors for cardiovascular disease and other chronic conditions can be powerfully affected by the small choices we make every day,” said Richard Stein, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Director of Urban Community Cardiology Program, New York University School of Medicine, and a volunteer spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s Start! campaign. “Simply taking the stairs instead of the elevator to go up a floor or two doesn’t seem like much, but, like contributions to a retirement plan, it adds up. Wellness programs that effectively promote healthy behavior can have an outsized influence on health outcomes.”

NCQA’s new WHP program will examine whether wellness companies use evidence-based methods to improve and maintain good health. The comprehensive accreditation program assesses several key areas in health promotion, including whether:

• Wellness programs are implemented in the workplace,
• Individual health information is properly safeguarded.
• Services such as coaching are provided to help participants develop skills to make healthy choices, and
• Continuous efforts to improve program quality are in place.

“The greatest value of this program to organizations such as ours is that it provides a consistent definition of excellence in the area of wellness and health promotion,” said David Anderson, Ph.D., Vice President, Program Strategy & Development, Staywell Health Management “Earning accreditation would show our customers the high level of service we provide – and the program’s standards and measures are a jumping-off point for quality improvement efforts.”

Members of the public are invited to comment on the measures through June 30. Details and instructions are available on NCQA’s Web site at www.ncqa.org. The Wellness and Health Promotion product suite is slated for launch in early 2009.

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. For more information, visit http://www.ncqa.org/.

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