What We Learned from Our Virtual Care Accreditation Pilot
September 19, 2024 · Becky Kolinski
NCQA’s Virtual Care Accreditation program provides a quality improvement framework for organizations that deliver primary care and/or urgent care through virtual modalities. In the program pilot, 18 organizations offered valuable input into the program’s development.
Pilot participants, representing 12 states and Puerto Rico, included health plans, health systems, Federally Qualified Health Centers, patient-centered medical homes and virtual-only organizations providing primary care and/or urgent care.
Benefits of Virtual Care Accreditation
Virtual health care is now a core function of the care delivery system. The Virtual Care Accreditation pilot program helped NCQA understand the needs of virtual care organizations and how Accreditation can help improve the quality of care they deliver.
Organizations that earn this Accreditation can:
- Define Processes. Identify gaps and formalize policies and procedures for virtual care delivery. This is especially true for organizations that launched virtual care programs during the COVID pandemic.
- Create Structure. Develop a cohesive program by bringing together components housed in different departments.
- Improve the Patient Experience. Raise awareness about the patient experience and literacy with virtual-visit technology.
- Focus on Equity. Identify and proactively address health disparities. Provide training and resources for care teams.
- Define Quality Measures. Align on quality metrics and target areas for improvement.
- Expand Data Collection. Collect necessary demographic data, including data on race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation and gender identity for quality reporting.
- Build Consensus. Validate needs and highlight issues for leadership to address.
Insights from Our Pilot Participants
Our pilot organizations share their thoughts on how participating in the program helped them focus and improve care.
“The program has been invaluable in identifying and addressing both our strengths and areas of needed improvement within our organization. It has enabled us to pinpoint areas for process improvement and guided us in establishing clear quality metrics.”
Misty M., Vice President, Clinical Business Development
“This pilot program has helped us to thoroughly evaluate our virtual care program, policies, procedures and processes. It has helped us better understand the type of information that can be collected from virtual care visits and ensure that all aspects of quality care are being delivered in these visits.”
Milibeth C., Vice President, Quality Assurance and Clinical Risk Management
“It definitely opened our eyes to processes we had implemented during the COVID emergency that had not been formally documented. Our virtual care program was dispersed throughout different departments and needed structure. Our team learned so much from our participation. We are grateful for the opportunity.”
Wanda A., Quality Advisor and Certification Specialist
Moving Forward With Virtual Care Accreditation
NCQA’s Virtual Care Accreditation program launched on July 31. It provides organizations with a roadmap to quality care, enabling better outcomes for patients receiving care through virtual modalities.
NCQA developed separate evaluation programs for primary care and urgent care. Organizations can choose the primary care module or the urgent care module—or pursue both modules at the same time.
The standards are available in the NCQA store, and the system will be available for digital applications in November.
Learn more about the program here. Watch our recent webinar, Virtual Care Accreditation 101, to learn how NCQA’s new Virtual Care Accreditation can serve as a roadmap for quality virtual care delivery within primary care and urgent care.
