Researchers confirm that health disparities lead to increased treatment costs and adverse health outcomes in underserved populations. Federal and state agencies will soon require health plans and organizations to identify and address disparities.
NCQA is now offering Health Equity Accreditation (HEA) as a means of providing an actionable framework for improving health equity. As of April 2022, a number of states including California, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, require HEA as part of regulatory requirements. Additional states such as Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, and California currently or plan to offer incentive payments to health plans prioritizing health equity.
Health equity regulatory requirements include, but are not limited to:
- reporting health equity-related measures, separated by race/ethnicity;
- providing language assistance;
- integrating culturally and linguistically appropriate services;
- targeting quality improvement among disparate populations; and
- reducing health care disparities.
Our team of experts has served as trusted partners with NCQA as HEDIS® auditors and Data Validators. As a woman minority-owned business, the QMetrics team understands the challenges affecting underserved individuals and the cumulative effects on populations. We maintain a personal mission to address health disparities. QMetrics remains committed to helping health systems identify, prioritize, and improve health equity for the communities served.
Our HEDIS and Accreditation experts offer a comprehensive suite of services including:
- Overview of Health Equity Accreditation and benefits of attaining HEA
- Readiness Assessment complete with gap analysis and recommendations to successfully obtain HEA
- Strategic planning, roadmap & implementation guidance and assistance
- Template documents and reports designed to meet HEA Standards
- Organizational Design such as:
- Organizational chart
- Job descriptions
- Staff planning
- Policies and procedures
- Standard Operations Procedures
- Committee development
- Reporting and data analytics
- Ad-hoc support including addressing questions about HEA, document review, mock scoring, staff training, support through the end-to-end Accreditation process.
Our services can be tailored to meet individual needs and preferences – ranging from support assessing readiness to an immersive hands-on partnership where we can develop operations, documents, and planning needed to attain HEA.
Contact us at: info@qmetrics.us for a complimentary consultation