(NCQA: Washington) -- Beginning in 2010, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) will publicly report on health plans' resource use for patients with diabetes and asthma. The reporting of these two relative resource use (RRU) measures will allow purchasers and consumers to compare plans' relative efficiency in caring for such patients using standardized, risk-adjusted data.

"Purchasers have long been calling for ways to make apples-to-apples comparisons among health plans on the basis of not just quality, but also efficiency," says Margaret E. O'Kane, NCQA's president. "Given the rising costs of care, smart health-care shoppers are looking to be able to choose plans that deliver the right mix of quality and value. Publicly reporting RRU measures will allow them to compare plans against national benchmarks, and one another."

The proposal to move the RRU measures to public reporting was approved by NCQA's Committee on Performance Measurement, a group which comprises of a wide range of health care thought leaders, including physicians, purchasers, consumers, labor, and plan representatives.

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