Catawba Women's Center Achieves NCQA Bridges to Excellence Physician Recognition

People generally select their doctor based on very little information — the recommendation of a friend, location or even office hours. For such an important decision, shouldn’t you have a more objective way of finding excellent physicians?

In partnership with two of the nation’s leading advocacy organizations, the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has developed two physician recognition programs to help identify doctors who deliver excellent care to patients with diabetes or cardiac-related illnesses. A third program, Physician Practice Connections, recognizes doctors who have adopted practice systems — typically technology based systems such as electronic medical records — to help them deliver the best care consistently. A new program will identify those who provide care for patients with back pain that medical evidence has shown to be most effective and efficient.

Helping people identify high-quality doctors is important: some doctors are simply more effective than others in treating particular illnesses. And the health care you get from one physician for a given illness may be very different from the care you get from a different physician for the same illness. Physician Recognition programs help people find those doctors that consistently treat patients according to the best available scientific evidence.

Doctors who participate in Physician Recognition programs tend to improve the quality of care they provide quite rapidly. Professional ethics is a strong motivator throughout the field, and doctors who identify opportunities for improvement typically change practice patterns and make improvements quickly. Employers and others have taken note of the value of physician-level recognition and performance measurement programs. Many large employers and coalitions such as the Bridges to Excellence coalition are experimenting with physician-level pay-for-performance programs to help encourage doctors to participate in such programs. And as employers know, when their employees get better care, they will be happier, more motivated and more productive.

Catawba Women’s Center is proud to be the first and only Obstetric & Gynecology practice in North Carolina to achieve the stamp of approval and recognition from NCQA’s Physician Practice Connection program. Just one more reason, you can be proud to choose Catawba Women’s Center as a partner in Caring for a Lifetime.