If your health plan or managed behavioral health care organization is being surveyed by NCQA after July 1, 2009 you’re in luck. Several changes that go into effect for the 2010 standards year are being made effective for surveys under the 2009 standards.
For Health Plan Accreditation, the use of CAHPS results to score MEM 3C, MEM 3D, MEM 5E, and MEM 5F is ending. The scoring elements will go away in 2010 but for surveys under the 2009 standards, these elements will all be scored “not applicable.” These elements relate to (respectively) Outcome of Claims Timeliness, Outcome of Accuracy of Claims Handling, Outcome of Written Materials, and Outcome of Telephone Services.
For MBHO Accreditation, QI 2E, Safety and Quality Data Collection, will be scored “not applicable” for 2009 surveys and will disappear for 2010. This element is one that was eliminated long ago for health plans but persistently hung-on for MBHOs. The element required that MBHOs have “a plan for collecting and providing information on safety and quality that” included “[a]ctivities to collect information on providers’ actions to improve patient safety” and “[a]ctivities to make performance data publicly available for members and practitioners.”
Evaluation of New Technology, UM 10, is also going away. For 2009 surveys the entire standard will be scored “not applicable” before being removed from the manual in 2010.
In the next blog I’ll highlight some of the changes to the 2009 standards that have been previously published by NCQA—just in case you missed them.
