NCQA to offer population health accreditation, IT system evaluation
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recently announced that it is launching two new population health management programs.
The Population Health Program Accreditation will assess how an organization applies population health concepts to programs for defined populations, and the Population Health Management Prevalidation program will review health IT solutions in terms of their ability to support population health management functions.
The Population Health Program Accreditation will provide standards for organizations that promote efficiency while meeting complex patient needs and preventing unnecessary costs. The NCQA states that achieving this accreditation will allow organizations to offer automatic credit to health plans seeking NCQA Accreditation.
The accreditation program will evaluate organizations in the following areas:
- Data integration
- Measurement and quality improvement
- Population assessment
- Population segmentation
- Practitioner support
- Targeted interventions
The Population Health Management Prevalidation program will evaluate health IT systems to identify functionality that meets NCAQ standards for population health management. According to the NCQA, those groups that meet the NCQA’s health IT requirements will earn automatic credit toward their NCQA surveys and receive marketing support, as the NCQA will list any prevalidated vendors that provide IT support on its website.
The prevalidation program evaluates IT solutions in up to four areas:
- Case management systems
- Data integration
- Population assessment
- Segmentation