The National Committee for Quality Assurance launched a digital quality solutions pilot program where health plans, delivery systems and health information technology firms can test, review and align quality measurement across the healthcare industry.
Aetna, Health Care Service Corporation, 1UpHealth, ApolloMed, Change Healthcare and Centauri Health Solutions will participate in the six-month pilot, which will include workshops, product feature testing and feedback sessions.
NCQA wants to grow beyond its role as a quality evaluator of health plans and physician practices and develop software with constant user input and frequent technology updates.
"By working with digital quality trailblazers, we will evolve measures from paper-based to fully executable, improve configurability to support various use cases and give measures the flexibility to add value and insight at different levels of the healthcare system," NCQA President Margaret O'Kane said in a news release.
Participants will assess quality improvement and care management efforts, as well as comment on NCQA's Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set measure reporting, where healthcare systems align themselves with a standardized set of quality and safety performance measures.
The committee plans to form a more connected, consistent framework for digital quality measurement, which it hopes will help improve healthcare in real time, said Brad Ryan, chief product officer at NCQA, in a news release.
"The healthcare industry needs to accelerate the move to digital equality, and there's a tremendous opportunity for digital measurement solutions that are more powerful, configurable and dynamic than anything available now," Ryan said.
