Quality Matters: A Podcast by NCQA

For this special episode of Inside Health Care, we continue our celebration of Pride month with Abner Mason, the Founder and C-E-O of SameSky Health . Abner, who is African-American and Gay, says he proudly represents all aspects of himself in his work. He say it was empathy that led him to create SameSky Health, his company that works with health plans to change their approach to patients. SameSk...

Happy Pride Month! In this episode, we speak with a psychologist whose company develops software that help diagnose behavioral issues in adolescents on the spot. Later, we talk with one of NCQA’s newest executives. Finally, we offer another dose of “Matt’s Facts”, this time focusing on some historical dates and important statistics relating to the LGBTQ+ population . Dr. Yared Alemu is Founder and...

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. In talking about behavioral health, NCQA again is at the forefront of health measurement. The NCQA Distinction in Behavioral Health Integration program works with NCQA PCMHs to perform gap analyses and figure out how to bring better care to mental health and substance abuse patients. One of the first health systems to qualify for our Behavioral Health distinct...

On this show, we often discuss health disparities, but they're usually focused on populations identified by either race or ethnicity. This episode focuses on strides being made towards policyand measurement that would better address health equity gaps in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, community. Dr. Kellan Baker is a health services researcher with a PhD in health policy and...

This week, we answer the age-old question: how do you talk about Health Equity without talking about Health Equity? NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation Programs provide a strong framework for health care entities to improve equity in their organizations. When it comes to solving gaps in Equity, our guests in this episode come from very different backgrounds and experiences. Yet each one proves how...

Our show today celebrates three outstanding health care workers: NCQA’s Patient-Centered Medical Home Certified Content Expert Award Winners. NCQA’s PCMH is the most widely adopted recognition program of its kind in the United States. Over 10,000 practices have been recognized through our PCMH, with more than 95 organizations in support of the program. The NCQA PCMH Content Expert Certification pr...

In this episode of "Inside Health Care", we discuss the "hospital at home" health care model with two experts in remote care. Dr. Sally Friedman is a chief endocrinology fellow in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Friedman is an expert in the use of “continuous glucose monitoring” in in-patient diabetes mana...

In this episode, we get a look ahead, both at the future of NCQA's Quality Measurement agenda and our Quality Talks 2022 event . Dr. Eric Schneider is NCQA's recently-appointed Executive Vice President of the Quality Measurement and Research Group. In this role, he helps drive NCQA’s efforts to create a more equitable health care system and to advance the move to digital quality measurement. Befor...

In this episode of Inside Health Care, we give you the inside scoop on Quality Talks , coming on April 21, 2022. But before that, we feature an exclusive interview with one of this year's speakers: Sami Inkinen . Inkinen is CEO and Co-Founder of Virta Health , which provides treatment to sustainably reverse type 2 diabetes without medications or surgery. But get this: Inkinen is not a clinician. H...

Imagine a world where all medical and patient information gets combined and processed efficiently. No matter how many doctors you’d see about a certain problem, each doctor would already have the test results and evaluations of the one before. And the health systems themselves would automatically grab all that patient info…and use it to fix what’s broken in the patient care system. Sounds like a l...

Dr. Nichola Davis is Vice President and Chief Population Health Officer at New York City’s Health and Hospitals. Dr. Davis' new project: The New York City Public Health Corps. Dayna Bell, Executive Director for Health Care Quality at Aetna/CVS Health, joins later. A long-time NCQA veteran, she reminds us of the importance of being prepared. We talk “Accreditation Readiness,” and delivers details o...

NCQA launched its Health Equity Accreditation program late last year. In another exciting development, it’s  launched a pilot version of Health Equity Accreditation Plus, designed for organizations that already have an equity program but are looking for advanced ways to measure and boost existing efforts. Both programs provide a thorough framework to measure progress and inform new disparity-elimi...

In 2021, the pandemic continued to test our health system. In this episode of “Inside Health Care” featuring NCQA’s President, Peggy O’Kane, we look back at how the pandemic brought challenges but also inspired innovation. In this chat with NCQA’s Vice President of Public Policy and External Relations, Frank Micciche, Peggy looks back at the uneasiness of 2021…before looking ahead, with hope, at t...

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This episode of "Inside Health Care" features Dr. Lisa A. Cooper, a pioneer in closing the gaps that still persist in health care equity. Dr. Lisa A. Cooper is an internist, a health services researcher, and a social epidemiologist. A recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2007, Dr. Cooper pioneered methods of measuring racial and ethnic disparities in the quality of communication and relation...

Everybody knows how annoying it can be when a doctor sits you down and asks you a ton of irrelevant questions, sometimes with their nose in their laptop, before even examining you. On this podcast, we talk a lot about the ‘Digitalization of health.’ But once someone gathers the data, crunches the numbers, then sends them to the right people, what’s next? For answers, in this episode on Inside Heal...

This week's episode of NCQA's Inside Health Care podcast observes National Diabetes Month. We feature a discussion with two experts in diabetes care who discuss the links between diabetes diagnosis and kidney disease. Following that, we have a chat with NCQA President Peggy O'Kane about moving Health Equity solutions to the top of U.S. health care agenda. More than  37 million adults in the U.S. h...

Why do the issues of Health Equity persist? If agencies and NGOs have spent years identifying gaps in care for minority groups in the U.S., what needs to be done to solve these issues, once and for all? Enter NCQA Research Scientist Dr. Rachel Harrington. In the paper titled "An Equity Agenda for the Field of Health Care Quality Improvement," published in mid-September 2021 by the National Academy...

In September 2021, the esteemed Health Affairs organization published a significant paper in their online blog, titled “A New Effort To Address Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Care Through Quality Measurement.” The authors, from NCQA and beyond, focus on the strides being made in collecting accurate data on patient race and ethnicity, discussing current strides in parsing and disseminating that d...

A frequent guest on this podcast, SmartRise Health CEO Vanessa Guzman chats with NCQA’s Matt Brock about how the pandemic uncovered pre-existing gaps in health care services, health equity, and institutional communication. Vanessa is an expert in population health strategies, including patient and physician engagement, clinical reporting, and health IT and quality management models. Please note th...

Kevin Wiley, NCQA’s new Phyllis Torda Health Care Quality and Equity Fellow, researches solutions for improving care delivery and coordination for minority communities. Kevin chats with NCQA Director of Communications Matt Brock about what can be done both to simplify patient care and to help patients and their providers to share information more efficiently. We also learn about his plans for the...

In this episode of “Inside Health Care,” we hear from a member of the Digital Measurement Community, Tavia Rauch, head of clinical informatics with the New York e-Health Collaborative. Before that, she spent nearly five years in charge of population health and data quality for non-profit Hixny, a health information exchange connecting individuals, providers, and organizations across eastern New Yo...

On this episode of NCQA's podcast "Inside Health Care," Dr. Shantanu Nundy chats with NCQA CEO Peggy O'Kane about his book, "Care After COVID," and what the medical community can learn from the COVID crisis. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Janani Rangaswami, MD, FACP, FCRS, FAHA Mary Barton, MD In 2020, NCQA convened a Diabetes and Heart Failure Roundtable with a diverse panel of experts to confront the persistent challenges of care delivery and to drive improvement in the quality of care for patients affected by type 2 diabetes and heart failure. Findings from the discussion are presented in a white paper, Optimizing Care for Patie...

Vanessa Guzman of SmartRise Health In this episode of Inside Health Care, Vanessa Guzman, CEO of SmartRise Health , chats with NCQA’s Matt Brock about aligning quality improvement between payers and providers. Vanessa discusses key components of a quality program for these two groups, and how to prioritize measures when participating in multiple value-based care arrangements. Vanessa also discusse...