NCQA awards Excellent Accreditation status to AvMed Health for its commercial and Medicare products

For two consecutive years, AvMed Health Plans has received an Excellent Accreditation status from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for both its commercial and Medicare products. The Excellent rating is the NCQA's highest accreditation status for service and clinical quality that meet or exceed NCQA's rigorous requirements for consumer protection and quality improvement.

The Excellent ratings distinguish AvMed among accredited health plans based on an evaluation of how well the health plan manages all parts of its delivery system - physicians, hospitals, other providers and administrative services - in order to continuously improve the health care for its members.

In order for AvMed to receive the Excellent Accreditation, its annual HEDIS(® )evaluation also had to achieve results in the highest range of performance.

AvMed has also achieved NCQA distinction in the way it connects to its members as well as in 'care management and health improvement.'

"We are pleased that the NCQA has given AvMed an Excellent rating for both our Medicare and Commercial products. Only a handful of health plans receive Excellent ratings for both products and we are very proud to be a part of that elite group," said Ed Hannum, president and COO of AvMed. "Our goal is always to provide the highest quality products and service to our members and we feel that receiving the Excellent rating once again truly reflects the standards to which we hold ourselves."

"It is partly a health plan's members that determine whether it earns NCQA's Excellent Accreditation Status," said Margaret E. O'Kane, President of the NCQA. "Any plan that does so should be proud of its accomplishment. It is a sign that the plan's delivering great service and great care - it's met the toughest test in managed care."

To achieve the Excellent Accreditation status, AvMed participated in NCQA surveys including rigorous on and off-site evaluations of more than 60 different standards and selected HEDIS performance measures that fell into the following categories: access and service, qualified providers, staying healthy, getting better and living with illness. A team of physicians and managed care experts conducts the Accreditation surveys and a national oversight committee of physicians analyzes the team's findings and assigns an accreditation level.

The NCQA Accreditation status is used by employers and consumers as an evaluation tool when selecting a health plan for the coming year.

NCQA is an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to measuring the quality of America's health plans.

* HEDIS is a registered trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

SOURCE AvMed Health Plans