(NCQA: Washington) -- Preferred provider organizations (PPOs), which cover nearly two-thirds of all privately insured Americans, will be required to report on the quality of care and service their members receive under standards that were released on Aug. 1 by the National Committee for Quality Assurance. All health plans—including health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and PPOs—will be evaluated under the same set of standards. A broad cross-section of 41 employers, labor unions, policymakers, and consumer advocates endorsed the new standards.Americans spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as other industrialized nations, but often receiver lower quality care. For more than a decade, NCQA has measured and publicly reported the quality of care delivered by HMOs through its healthcare effectiveness data and information set (HEDIS), the most widely used measure of quality in the nation. Plans that measure and publicly report their quality data routinely outperform those that don’t, saving lives and reducing costs.

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