Phytel Population Health Platform First to Achieve NCQA 2014 Patient-Centered Medical Home Auto-Credit

DALLAS, March 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Phytel, t­he premier company empowering physician-led population health improvement, announced today that the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) will allow physician practices using Phytel's solutions to automatically meet a significant portion of NCQA's 2014 criteria for recognition as a patient-centered medical home (PCMH). Phytel is the first population health technology provider to be pre-validated for the 2014 PCMH criteria by NCQA.

The agreement with NCQA means that physician practices using Phytel solutions can fully automate several of the most challenging requirements of formal NCQA PCMH recognition, such as the identification of patients with gaps in recommended care, outreach to better engage those patients, and the ability to generate performance reports on a multitude of population health quality measures.

Those same capabilities were key factors leading to Phytel's recognition as the population health management category leader in the 2014 Best in KLAS awards, announced Jan. 29.

"By providing software that helps physician practices build the patient-focused, coordinated care infrastructure expected of NCQA patient-centered medical homes, Phytel is helping practices be part of modern health care's most important transformations," said NCQA President Margaret E. O'Kane. "Medical homes are the way of the future, and Phytel is helping practices get there."

Ashok Rai, MD, President and CEO of Prevea Health, a 180-physician medical group based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, commented, "Being able to get automatic credit for using Phytel is a huge plus. Eliminating the need to divert precious care team and IT resources to manually perform tasks that Phytel tools fully automate – plus not having to submit supporting documentation to NCQA – dramatically streamlines the process for achieving medical home recognition. With the help of Phytel, we will be able to meet new PCMH 2014 standards and sustain important population health management workflows much more readily."

PCMH is a team-based health care delivery model that is becoming increasingly popular as a means of delivering comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients and obtaining better health outcomes.  NCQA's PCMH 2014 Pre-validation program is designed to help physician practices identify products that alleviate or make more efficient administrative aspects of meeting PCMH 2014 requirements. Practices that use an NCQA pre-validated system with auto-credit awarded to a factor do not have to submit documentation for that associated factor within their PCMH Survey.

Third Straight Year of Phytel Pre-Validation
This latest pre-validation advances NCQA's previous recognition of Phytel as a PCMH leader. In 2012, NCQA made Phytel the first non-EHR vendor to receive pre-validation for PCMH. As a result, many of Phytel's clients have received auto-credit for PCMH recognition credit from NCQA.

Phytel's population health team includes NCQA PCMH Certified Content Experts to assist organizations with maximizing their use of Phytel solutions in achieving PCMH 2014 recognition.  Our experts can assist practices with either renewing/upgrading from the PCMH 2011 standards, or pursuing PCMH recognition for the first time.

"Coming on the heels of our KLAS recognition as the population health management leader, this latest pre-validation by NCQA shows yet again how our scalable technology automates the routine tasks of population health and care management that are difficult for practices to undertake manually yet critical to the transformation we all want," said Richard Hodach, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Phytel. "We are pleased that this agreement with NCQA makes it even easier for physician practices to achieve PCMH recognition with our solutions and enable care teams to do more without increasing their workload."

Phytel's Outreach™, version 6.6, Insight^TM, version 1.8, and Coordinate^TM, version 2.3 are pre-validated by NCQA to receive significant points as auto-credit toward NCQA's PCMH 2014 scoring, including full points and Must Pass credit for Element 3D. Auto-credit is transferrable to Phytel's PCMH client practices seeking NCQA's PCMH Recognition. Phytel's PCMH eligible client practices must be actively utilizing the reviewed capabilities associated with Phytel's PCMH pre-validated product(s) in order to be eligible for transfer of awarded auto-credit.

New Book Tells the Population Health Story
Phytel recently published "Provider-Led Population Health Management," the first book to explain how providers can lead population health management (PHM) initiatives using automation to optimize care teams.  The book provides a critical roadmap to achieving success in value-based arrangements such as PCMHs and accountable care organizations. 

"Provider-Led Population Health Management," by Richard Hodach, M.D., M.P.H, Ph.D., is available on Amazon.com as well as at www.providerledpopulationhealth.com.

About NCQA
NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations. It also recognizes clinicians and practices in key areas of performance. NCQA's Web site (www.ncqa.org) contains information to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices.

About Phytel
The premier company empowering physician-led population health improvement, Phytel provides physicians with proven technology to deliver timely, coordinated care to their patients. Phytel's SaaS-based registry uses evidence-based chronic and preventive care protocols to identify and notify patients due for service, while tracking compliance and measuring quality and financial results. The only company to combine care management automation tools with an advanced patient engagement engine, Phytel is the 2014 Best in KLAS™ category leader for population health management. Phytel is also ISO 9001:2008 certified, confirming adherence to ISO's internationally recognized Total Quality Management (TQM) standards. For more information, please visit www.phytel.com. Follow us on Twitter and find us on Facebook. 

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