NCQA ANNUAL REPORT HIGHLIGHTS MEDICAL HOME MODEL
Focus on value reflects growing interest among employers, consumers

WASHINGTON—The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today released its 2007 annual report, Coming Home to Better Care.  The report looks at the promise that the Patient-Centered Medical Home, a promising approach that seeks to strengthen the patient-physician relationship by replacing episodic care with coordinated care and a long-term healing relationship.

"The Patient-Centered Medical Home isn’t just an appealing idea. It is increasingly recognized as an antidote to today’s fragmented system in which episodic care is delivered by a range of providers who are not as well-connected to one another as they should be," said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. “This model makes intuitive sense.”

Featured in this year’s report are interviews with health care thought leaders who have led the call for widespread implementation of the Medical Home model, including

• Paul Grundy, M.D., MPH, FACOEM, FACPM, Director of Healthcare, Technology and Strategic Initiatives for IBM Global Wellbeing Services and Health Benefits and Chairman of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative
• Karen Davis, President of The Commonwealth Fund
• John Tooker, M.D., MBA, FACP, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the American College of Physicians
• Xavier Sevilla, M.D., FAAP, a Florida pediatrician who re-engineered his office and care delivery systems from the ground up to incorporate the principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home.

NCQA’s 2007 Annual Report is now available on NCQA’s Web site free of charge at http://www.ncqa.org.

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.

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