Dive Brief:
- The National Committee for Quality Assurance is seeking public input until Aug. 6 on its proposed standards for a new "recognition" program for sites delivering care in a nontraditional way. This includes telemedicine providers, worksite clinics, urgent care clinics and retail clinics.
- NCQA wants to assess whether nontraditional practice sites—which are not patient-centered medical homes—are doing a good job of connecting patients back with primary care providers.
- NCQA's Patient-Centered Connected Care recognition program would assess performance in six broad areas: communication with patients' primary-care practitioners; referral processes; patient engagement; tracking lab and imaging tests; use of information technology such as electronic health records and electronic prescribing; and measurement of clinical outcomes.
Dive Insight:
NCQA, a private, nonprofit organization, said it aims to ensure that information about care delivered at these nontraditional sites is shared with medical homes. Its proposed clinical performance measures vary by type of facility: retail clinics would be assessed on five quality metrics, urgent care clinics on nine and employers' worksite clinics on the most at 14.
An official with the National Association of Worksite Health Centers told Modern Healthcare that his group supports accreditation programs along the lines of what NCQA is proposing, especially when it involves connecting a worksite clinic to a patient’s primary-care physician. But he said that choosing one accreditation program over another depends on a clinic's size, resources and business strategy.
Earlier in July, the Urgent Care Association of America said that 82 more facilities had received its three-year "certified urgent care center" designation for meeting specific nationally-standardized criteria that describe the level of services provided.
An NCQA official told Healthcare Dive that NCQA anticipates launching the new program in early 2015, although it may be closer to next summer. She contrasted NCQA's standards to those of industry groups by explaining that NCQA is placing a stronger emphasis on a clinic's communication with PCPs as opposed to its cleanliness and the like. She described it as a clinical "recognition program," as opposed to a certification or accreditation program, and said NCQA "already is recruiting some pilot organizations to test the standards," which it traditionally does to get real-time feedback.