Passing the Quality Torch: Peggy O’Kane and Dr. Vivek Garg Share the Stage at the Health Innovation Summit

October 16, 2025 · NCQA Communications

On the last day of the Health Innovation Summit in San Diego, NCQA President and Founder, Peggy O’Kane passed the torch to its next leader, Dr. Vivek Garg, marking 35 years of advancing health care quality and charting the course for NCQA’s future.

Here are some highlights from their conversation.

Dr. Garg: I feel like for the last few days I’ve been visiting the house that Peggy built. And it’s been awesome. This community is awesome, this movement you’ve helped to create. How do you feel about this community?

Peggy’ O’Kane: I just find it amazing to be in this role. This conference is usually really good, but this year I think it’s been particularly great. I feel incredibly fortunate to be working with the quality community, with our teams at NCQA, and now with you, Vivek.

Dr. Garg: I know you don’t like to talk about your achievements because you’re always focused on the future, but what are some of your proudest accomplishments?

Peggy O’Kane: We created the first national system of quality measurement. We created an accreditation program alongside employers who were the purchasers of health care. Those are very proud achievements. But the other thing I really feel proud about is that five years ago we decided that quality measurement isn’t working the way it should be. It should be much more embedded in medical practice. What we’re really trying to do with digital quality measurement is to have people look at their numbers and change the way care is delivered. Has it been a perfect journey? No. But have we gotten people’s attention with it? Yes, we have.

Dr. Garg: What do you think we should focus on next?

Peggy O’Kane: I think we need to enlarge the conversation. We are changing quality measures to be more salient, focused on more important issues and less burdensome. These things are going to take a while, but we also have to focus on the larger environment that these quality measures are deployed in. As long as we have such a fragmented delivery system, it’s really hard to identify who is an accountable entity. And when the accountable entity is a small medical practice, that’s pretty hard to measure. So, we need a policy environment that makes it in everybody’s interest to improve quality. We have a crazy reimbursement system in this country. It’s actively working in the wrong direction. We need to speak up and say, if you don’t pay primary care doctors appropriately, we cannot do this work. And if hospitals make more money by having readmissions than the penalty they pay, guess what’s going to happen?

Dr. Garg: Do you have any other advice for me, or the NCQA team, or this quality community?

Peggy O’Kane: We need to be much more intentionally working together. We’re all very busy in our own organizations, but we have a message to carry to the American public, to health policy leaders and to practitioners: We’re with you. We want to make this work.

Dr. Garg: That’s good advice. So, should we flip the table a little bit?

Peggy O’Kane: Yes. I want you to tell us about yourself and why you are coming to NCQA with this heartfelt dedication to quality.

Dr. Garg: Before I was a physician, I was a son. I grew up in a pretty small town in northern New Jersey. My father was a physician and I saw what being a clinician meant to him. My mother suffered from undiagnosed and unmanaged bipolar disorder for decades, and our family experienced a lot of social stigma, lack of understanding and emergent hospitalizations. I think we all have these experiences where we look at the health care journey and there’s so much lost opportunity. It doesn’t have to be that way. We have the science, the knowledge, the therapies, the interventions and the people. They’re just not set up in the right way. Coming to NCQA is an opportunity to take the quality measurement ecosystem forward, to put the insights in front of the people who actually work together to improve health.

Peggy O’Kane: You’ve had a big dose of NCQA for the past couple of days. What are the two or three things that you take away?

Dr. Garg: It’s clear that this community has a plan and a vision, and I want to be fully supportive of the great work that’s been started. As a clinician and someone working with clinical teams, I think patients assume the information is all there for their clinicians, and it’s not. I want to get to the point where producing the insights is not the work. The opportunity to help people improve their health begins at the point of having the insight. I think we can unleash a new wave of meaningful, clinically rich insights that help patients, families and clinicians see if conditions are optimally managed over time. That’s how we can bend the disease curve and the morbidity curve.

NCQA Announces the Quality Forward Fund

NCQA Board Chair, John Glaser joined O’Kane and Dr. Garg to announce the launch of the Quality Forward Fund—a collaborative effort to invest in research, consensus building and initiatives that drive better outcomes.

“This fund will target the areas where innovation is needed most,” says Glaser. “You’ve heard these themes throughout this conference: whole-person care, digital quality measurement and equitable access. It’s about putting resources where they’ll have the greatest impact on patients. In honor of Peggy’s enduring legacy, we’re inviting partners who share our mission to join us.”

Click here to learn more about the Quality Forward Fund.

Join Us Next Year

Mark your calendar for the 2026 Health Innovation Summit, October 4-7, in Atlanta, Georgia!