Growing Neighborhood Adds School Clinics, Urgent Cares and Others

April 12, 2015 · NCQA

NCQA launched its newest delivery system evaluation program, Patient-Centered Connected Care™ Recognition in April.

As more Americans receive care in nontraditional settings—such as retail-based clinics, urgent care centers and employer-based facilities—care can be fragmented. Patients may not have a practitioner who manages and tracks their care, leading to quality gaps.

NCQA Patient-Centered Connected Care Recognition will evaluate sites delivering outpatient health care that communicate effectively with a patient’s other providers—especially primary care providers that constitute a patient’s “medical home.” The result is integrated, patient-centered care for patients receiving care at multiple different care delivery sites.

Patient-Centered Connected Care Recognition uses evidence-based standards to evaluate how care teams collaborate with patients and how a care site connects to other providers. Already, 35 organizations representing 76 ambulatory care sites across 23 states are pursuing NCQA Patient-Centered Connected Care Recognition as early adopters of the program.

“NCQA’s Patient-Centered Connected Care program is a paradigm shift in accountable care that will help ambulatory care settings collaborate with primary care, to provide continuous patient care,” said Randy Curnow, MD, Vice President of Medical Affairs, Mercy Health Physicians.

For information on Patient-Centered Connected Care Recognition, visit www.ncqa.org/connectedcare.