FAQ Directory: Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH)

Unless a regular operational employee of the organization, a consultant is not to assume responsibility for generating or demonstrating the evidence for Recognition. While external consultants are welcome to be part of the virtual reviews or audit, these calls are led by the appropriate practice team members.  NCQA reserves the right to obtain contact information of consultants working with the practice as well as verify the identity of individuals present during the virtual review or audit.

PCMH

Every qualifying clinician at a practice site is required to be listed in Q-PASS. Clinicians who meet the following three criteria must be listed for each Recognized PCMH site they practice at:

1. MDs, DOs, PAs and APRNs (including nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists) who practice internal medicine, family medicine or pediatrics.
2. The clinician can be selected by patients as their primary care clinician. 
3. The clinician has their own or shares a patient panel.

PCMH

Any structural or operational change must be reported to NCQA. Organizations must contact their NCQA Representative for further instructions within 30 days of the change.

PCMH

Best Practices from NCQA’s Virtual Primary Care Program to PCMH:
The following elective criteria were written during the creation process of the new Virtual Care program, but found to be best practice for all primary care settings. For this reason, nine new elective criteria are added to the PCMH program.
 

PCMH 2017

Cadence Thresholds Added:
Cadence thresholds are applied to 45 criteria to ensure continuous improvement and to avoid stagnation in workflows (i.e. “at least annually").
 

PCMH 2017

Criteria Retirement:
Eight criteria were identified as no longer serving a substantial purpose or adding meaningful value to primary care, leading to their retirement from the PCMH program.

PCMH 2017

The OMB is requiring “Middle Eastern or North African” for the race/ethnicity combination list. If you do not have “Middle Eastern or North African” as a race only option (if you are collecting race and ethnicity separately), it is ok.

We are instructing practices to work with their vendor to include the “Middle Eastern or North African” option to the combination race/ethnicity category so practices can transition to the OMB race/ethnicity combo for future collection.
 

PCMH

Yes. Adult practices can submit one of these as a custom immunization measure. Since neither of these have 2024 specifications in the eCQI Resource Center, you will need to enter the  numerator/denominator definitions along with your data.
 

PCMH

PCMH 2017

No, unless otherwise stated in the specifications, quality measures do not have thresholds that must be met.  

With that said, CMS 68 is similar to KM-15 (core): Maintaining an up-to-date list of medications for more than 80% of patients. Both sets of data require the same action of updating the medication list. However, they differ in that CMS 68 is for patients age 18+ and must be captured at every visit, whereas KM-15 is for all patients at any given time. It is unlikely that there would be a large variance between CMS 68 and KM-15. NCQA requests a note be added in QPASS if CMS 68 differs greatly from KM-15's 80% requirement. This is to provide context to the Review Oversight Committee to better understand your practice and environment. 

If your practice is in Annual Reporting, practices attest that they are in compliance with all core criteria and could provide evidence that they are meeting the more than 80% requirement of KM-15. 

PCMH 2017

The request for provider sign-off stems from the ability to verify work has been reviewed by the eligible clinician, and not solely managed by another role within the organization—or externally.

An eligible provider must be able to provide evidence of their involvement in Care Management efforts. They should not be submitting care management efforts they have not directly reviewed. That said, we suggest provider’s sign-off on care plans to indicate that they have reviewed the care plans they are counting towards their CM efforts. 

If there is a systematic limitation–meaning an electronic system does not allow the provider to electronically sign-off on the care plan–an acceptable workaround would be to provide a relevant office visit note(s), a telephone communication note(s), etc. where the provider has documented that the care plan was reviewed, discussed, updated, etc. with the patient. 

Evidence provided should exemplify that the eligible clinician has had direct oversight in care management efforts for the patient. Care planning efforts may be facilitated by other parties within the practice, but the eligible clinician must be an involved participant in the care management efforts included in their CM reporting.

PCMH 2017

The expectation is that diversity data is collected from all patients in the practice. An overwhelming majority of the practice’s population should have diversity data on file. If this is not the case, the practice should annotate an implementation plan in the notes section of Q-PASS. This plan should include an expected timeline for improved performance.

Please note that diversity data should be collected directly from the patient/family/caregiver. Please refer to the Standards and Guidelines for acceptable response options for each aspect of diversity.
 

PCMH 2017