About These Trainings

The Health Equity Subscription Plan

The Self Paced courses provide updates to NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation and Health Equity Accreditation Plus programs. Organization representatives share their experience with each program, along with best practices, tips and tools for continuing success with program goals.

If your organization has started the survey submission process or has earned Accreditation in NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation and/or Health Equity Accreditation Plus programs, the Health Equity Subscription Plan is for you.

What's Included:

The Health Equity Subscription Plan includes nine self-paced educational courses that provide program updates, best practices for implementing health equity initiatives and lessons learned from organizations that have achieved NCQA Health Equity Accreditation.

Health Equity Accreditation 2023 Updates & Delegation

NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation program focuses on the foundation of health equity work and helps health care organizations build an internal culture that identifies opportunities to reduce health inequities and improve patient care. Hear about program requirements and updates to the 2024 standards and guidelines, including information on delegation. 

See Yourself in NCQA’s Heath Equity Accreditation Programs Standards 

This course is an overview of NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation program standards, and outlines how the program’s framework helps payers, care delivery providers and health care organizations individually—and collaboratively—work to address inequities.

You’ll learn why Health Equity Accreditation is fundamental to helping organizations improve the quality of care they deliver to their populations.

Advancing Health Equity with HEDIS: What's New and Looking Forward 

NCQA subject matter experts review advancing equity in HEDIS measures. Includes a discussion of frequently asked questions; the state of equity data and alignment with other measurement efforts in the field; and a preview of equity efforts in HEDIS MY 2025 and beyond.

Health Equity “Ask the Expert” Town Hall 

During the live Town Hall, NCQA health equity experts answered questions from the live audience. Questions asked included clarification on policy updates, changes to the program and guidance on navigating the survey process.   

Ensure Success in the Journey to Health Equity Accreditation: The UPMC Experience 

The UPMC Insurance Services Division is Accredited in NCQA’s Health Equity and Health Equity Plus.

In this course, UPMC illustrates how the Health Equity Accreditation Plus program can serve as an actionable framework to instill health equity concepts across an organization while prompting continuous improvement through member-centric, clinically focused and evidence-based initiatives. You’ll hear recommendations on how to initiate the accreditation process through leadership buy-in, process management and readiness assessments. UPMC shares examples of challenges experienced during the accreditation process and the strategies they took to overcome them.

Health Equity Accreditation Plus

NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation Plus program helps health care organizations that have implemented core health equity activities establish processes and cross-sector partnerships that identify and address social risk factors in their communities and the social needs of the people they serve. This course highlights how Health Equity Accreditation Plus builds on the foundation of Health Equity Accreditation to support organizations that are more advanced and have an ongoing commitment to health equity. 

Barriers and Opportunities in Engaging Data to Advance Health Equity for Providers and Payers

Health care organizations, both payers and providers, have significantly increased their focus on equity over the last two years with many organizations incorporating patient, community, and workforce equity goals into their strategic plans. Emerging CMS and NCQA policies and payment programs will continue this emphasis on reducing health disparities by both increasing accountability and creating incentives for closing equity gaps. Organizations are increasingly being expected to collect data on their patients, members, and providers—such as race, ethnicity, language spoken, sexual orientation and gender identity—and be held accountable for differences in care provided and health outcomes among these groups. For organizations to succeed under these new requirements, they need a framework for applying an equity lens to their patient and member experience and an understanding of the ROI of doing so. 

This presentation will share a comprehensive approach to bringing an equity lens to health outcomes data. It will begin with a review of the current state of administrative data to denote patient racial and ethnic identity. An assessment tool for reviewing administrative data will be shared to diagnose the presence, quality, and accuracy of patient and member self-report of race and ethnicity and best practices for data gathering will be discussed. To demonstrate the power of high-quality administrative data, patient experience and workforce outcomes will be segmented by race and ethnicity to show patterns of disparities across the industry. Similar national findings will be shared for member experience. We will address the barriers and opportunities for both payers and providers to employ effective strategies so they can engage their patient, member, and workforce data with the goal of advancing health equity.

Implementing a Community Referral Network in NYC   

To increase access to social needs resources, the Bureau of Equitable Health Systems (BEHS) at New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene implemented a community referral platform among organizations serving in neighborhoods with highest health disparities. Organizations include Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and healthcare organizations. The platform provides a robust digital resource directory that makes it easy to search for services and share lists of resources to clients and patients. Resources include but are not limited to food pantries, SNAP assistance, mental health counseling, tenant’s rights education, and immigration support. The platform also enables organizations to electronically send to and receive referrals from each other. As part of the implementation, the CBOs and healthcare organizations also receive support to build their capacity in closing referral loops and optimizing usage of the platform’s features. 

This presentation will describe lessons learned in building a network of CBOs and healthcare organizations utilizing a community referral platform.  We will discuss successful strategies in driving adoption including offsetting cost, technical assistance, partnership development, and identification of place-based resources. We will also discuss solutions to mitigate barriers that required significant attention to address such as organizational and staff buy-in, metric development and workflow planning.

Implementing Digital Health as a Health Equity and Population Health Strategy  

Many organizations are doing good work but it’s not penetrating the communities they want to serve. Organizations must understand specific population needs, empower communities and patients to be activists of their own health while advancing systems to create an environment of trust. During this learning activity we’ll examine how organizations can connect with women, pediatrics, underserved and LGBTQ+ communities and how to design solutions that achieve patients' personal goals while achieving the best possible outcomes with available resources. 

Learning Objectives:

After completing the Health Equity Subscription offerings, participants will be able to:

1. Recognize the latest updates and changes to NCQA’s Health Equity Accreditation and Health Equity Accreditation Plus programs.
2. Outline the fundamentals of delegation standards within Health Equity Accreditation.
3. Summarize best practices examples of care delivery and lessons learned that support an organization’s health equity goals.

Who Should Attend:

• Health Plans
• Health Systems 
• Hospitals
• Accountable Care Orgs
• Providers
• Managed Behavioral Healthcare Orgs 
• Population Health Orgs
• Wellness Orgs
• Leveragers in the Federal Government, States and Employers