STANDARDS AIMED AT IMPROVING HEALTH CARE FOR
DIVERSE GROUPS  RELEASED FOR PUBLIC COMMENT

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WASHINGTON—The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today released a set of standards assessing the quality of culturally and linguistically appropriate services for public comment. Understanding the unique cultural and linguistic challenges minorities face is vital to creating a fair and equitable health care system for all Americans. NCQA will publish the proposed standards to be used by health care organizations as a yardstick for internal quality improvement.

“Navigating our health care system is difficult enough, but for many minorities and non-English speakers, there are additional obstacles to receiving quality care,” said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. “Improving language accessibility and cultural competence is a core responsibility for all health care providers.” 

The standards focused on the areas of:

• Data Collection Methods and Policies: Does the organization use safe, proven methods to collect the race, ethnicity and language data of its members? After the data is collected, is the data used and stored properly?
• Access, Availability and Evaluation of Language Services: Does the organization provide services and reading materials compatible with the languages of its members?
• Network Diversity and Cultural Competence: Does the organization’s practitioner network reflect the diversity of the members for whom they care? Are network practitioners properly attuned to their patients’ cultural needs and preferences? 
• Commitment to Accountability and Quality Improvement: Does the organization use its race, ethnicity and language data to evaluate and improve its products and services?

The standards are available for review on NCQA’s Web site, www.ncqa.org, through January 16, 2009. Scheduled for release in 2009, NCQA’s ambitious set of standards can be used as a roadmap for organizations to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services. NCQA will consider incorporating a subset of these standards into core accreditation programs in the future.

NCQA recently honored eight health plans for their initiatives to ensure culturally and linguistically appropriate services and reduce health care disparities. For more information about the awards, visit www.ncqa.org/clas_awards.

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.

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