National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)

The National Committee for Quality Assurance is a private, 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. Since its founding in 1990, NCQA has been a central figure in driving improvement throughout the health care system, helping to elevate the issue of health care quality to the top of the national agenda.  

The NCQA seal is a widely recognized symbol of quality. Organizations incorporating the seal into advertising and marketing materials must first pass a rigorous, comprehensive review and must annually report on their performance. For consumers and employers, the seal is a reliable indicator that an organization is well-managed and delivers high quality care and service.

NCQA has helped to build consensus around important health care quality issues by working with large employers, policymakers, doctors, patients and health plans to decide what’s important, how to measure it, and how to promote improvement. That consensus is invaluable — transforming our health care system requires the collected will and resources of all these constituencies and more.

NCQA’s programs and services reflect a straightforward formula for improvement: Measure. Analyze. Improve. Repeat. NCQA makes this process possible in health care by developing quality standards and performance measures for a broad range of health care entities. These measures and standards are the tools that organizations and individuals can use to identify opportunities for improvement. The annual reporting of performance against such measures has become a focal point for the media, consumers, and health plans, which use these results to set their improvement agendas for the following year.