NCQA’s Peggy O’Kane Reflects on Her Legacy and Quality’s Future

October 13, 2025 · NCQA Communications

NCQA’s Health Innovation Summit is underway in San Diego, California! The summit brings together leaders from across health care — payers, providers, technologists and quality leaders—who are working together to improve outcomes, reduce burden and build care that works for real people.

Highlights From Peggy O’Kane’s Opening Remarks

As she prepares to retire at the end of the year, NCQA President Peggy O’Kane reflected on her 35-year history at NCQA and where we need to go from here. “One thing I love about our quality movement: We always look ahead. The future is our favorite era,” says O’Kane. “I’m inspired by what’s next for quality and by who will lead it.”

We’ve made great progress, but there’s more work to do.

Quality shapes how we deliver care, fund care and earn trust. But collecting quality data can be burdensome and confusing—especially for frontline care teams. Primary care is the bedrock of a high functioning system, but it’s under tremendous strain. We need aligned incentives that reward collaboration and break down silos.

It’s not a failure of commitment—it’s a failure of connection.

Care teams want to do the right thing. But too often, they lack shared data and aligned systems to truly collaborate. Health plans and clinicians work in parallel, not partnership. And patients and families end up connecting the dots. This is especially true for older adults who navigate multiple conditions, providers and medications. If we can get care right for older adults, we can get it right for everyone.

There’s a world of untapped technology.

We don’t see broad deployment because many tools remain unproven. Device makers make enticing claims about what their products can do, but there’s little systematic evidence on effectiveness. We must validate and scale what works and integrate it into care delivery systems.

The system must do better.

We’ve built infrastructure—data systems, measure sets and reimbursement models. But we haven’t yet built the seamless, proactive human-centered experience patients deserve. The future of health care quality is teams sharing information in real time; primary care connected, respected and resourced; and quality—not as a department—but as a culture.

“Over 35 years, I’ve sat with clinicians, data scientists, payers, policymakers, caregivers and patients. I’ve seen how hard this work is—and what’s possible when we stay with it,” says O’Kane. “We’re not chasing a perfect score. We’re building a better system together.”

Learn More

We’ll be sharing more highlights from the Health Innovation Summit on the NCQA blog, so check back soon for updates!