Answer the questions in Bold - Essay Example

Quality and Patient Safety Initiative Analysis Here Here Here Here Quality and Patient Safety Initiative Analysis The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is a private, non-profit, American organization that aims to improve the health care system by promoting the importance of quality in the delivery of services. The association was founded in 1990, through the support of the philanthropic community, and developed accredited quality assurance programs with the help of a range of professionals.

While these courses remain voluntary, it is an undeniable advantage for industry participants to be granted NCQA certification (Chassin & O’Kane, 2010). The NCQA offers a number of programs that address different aspects of quality based on the target audience of the specific course. Clinicians can gain recognition for quality care knowledge of conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. They may also take obtain acknowledgement of quality in other aspects of the profession, such as providing patient-centered, up-to-date practice.

Employers can receive accreditation for quality health plan coverage, and a variety of care organizations (HMOs, diabetes care, promotion) can received extensive evaluations that are tailored to the quality standards associated with each area of the medical industry (Pawlson, & Lee, 2010). Patients/consumers are necessarily impacted by virtually every service provided by the NCQA, being the end users of the entire profession. While there are understandably no accreditation or recognition programs available for the public, there are materials and projects that are directly aimed at the general population.

The NCQA works directly with the government at both state and federal levels to work toward providing the highest quality of health services throughout the country. In addition, there are a variety of educational resources available through the association that serves to inform the public of the many challenges and improvements associated with the delivery of health care. As should be expected from any organization concerned with quality, the NCQA is regularly and repeatedly evaluated. They use a standard formula of measurement, analysis, improvement, and continual repetition.

This system is important for both regulation within the organization, and in the development of quality assurance programs. The measurements used to judge their own performance comes from a variety of national health care indicators. Given the scope of the NCQA, data from throughout the nation is valuable in the assessment process, and may come from a number of sources. The organization conducts its own statistical tests on the data, as appropriate, and releases a yearly report based on the results.

Self-reporting may be a problem, as it introduces a higher probability of bias in the experimentation process. Thankfully, given the goals of the program, such confounding seems unlikely. The NCQA has reported a trend of improving health markers in correlation with their implementation, assumedly based on the statistical results of their own assessments. They also boast a large improvement in the quality of coverage delivery by companies that have taken part in their programs, in comparison to those that have not.

It is apparent that the NCQA has had a significant impact in raising the quality of many health care services, according to their own reports, but it is always possible to improve. More focused research on the impact of their specific programs is needed to ensure the optimization of quality within the NCQA itself. The assessment of national health data is fine to gain a broad perspective, but the impact of other factors in these changes over time cannot be eliminated without sufficient control measures.

As a result, it is hard to say for certain that the NCQA programs are responsible for any portion of the observed improvements (Kuzel & Skoch, 2009). ReferencesChassin, M. R., & O’Kane, M. E. (2010). History of the Quality Improvement Movement. Toward Improving the Outcome of Pregnancy III, 2.Kuzel, A. J., & Skoch, E. M. (2009). Achieving a patient-centered medical home as determined by the NCQA. The Annals of Family Medicine, 7(1), 85-86.Pawlson, L. G., & Lee Jr, T. H. (2010). Clinical guidelines and performance measures.

American Journal of Managed Care, 16(1), 16-17.