Practice accreditation: The next big thing
NCQA says it will make your life easier
Although it’s still about a year away, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) in Washington, DC, is planning a new accreditation program for physician practices. According to communications manager Brian Schilling, the NCQA is still trying to find funding from several grant sources. "That makes it premature to discuss what the program will look like or when it will come out," he says. "But we do think it’s important, and we do want to do this."
The committee already has a basic preferred provider organization accreditation program. A full set of standards for it is due out in July 2000. Once that has been completed, says Schilling, the NCQA would like to start getting a physician organization accreditation program under way.
While some practices may view such a program as just one more administrative hoop they’ll have to jump through, Schilling says it should lessen the number of quality assurance programs you’ll have to contend with. "This is a recognized name in quality assurance that could be a marketing tool for a practice," he says. "And it is a way to streamline what you now have to do for every plan you work with. This could take the place of many or all of the individual accreditation programs you have to go through. That could result in substantial savings for both health plans and for physician organizations."
The physician practices that are part of the NCQA advisory board like the idea, and Schilling says it may be very attractive in markets where physician organizations contract directly with employers, such as California.
Although there are no specifics yet on what kinds of requirements the new accreditation program will have — and a pilot program hasn’t even been discussed — Schilling says any program likely will have a lot of the same "characteristics and flavor" of other NCQA accreditation programs. "Some of the standards may be identical to those we use for our MCO accreditation," he says. "But this is still under development."
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content