Each health maintenance organization must maintain an ongoing internal quality assurance program and keep related records, minutes, and documentation confidential.
Each health maintenance organization shall have an ongoing, internal quality assurance program to monitor and evaluate its health care services, including primary and specialist physician services, and ancillary and preventive health care services across all institutional and noninstitutional settings. The quality assurance program shall include, but not be limited to, the following: (1) A written statement of goals and objectives which emphasizes improved health status in evaluating the quality of care rendered to enrollees; (2) A written quality assurance plan which describes the following: (a) The health maintenance organization's scope and purpose in quality assurance; (b) The organizational structure responsible for quality assurance activities; (c) Contractual arrangements, when appropriate, for delegation of quality assurance activities; (d) Confidentiality policies and procedures; (e) A system of ongoing evaluation activities; (f) A system of focused evaluation activities; (g) A system for credentialing providers and performing peer review activities; and (h) Duties and responsibilities of the designated physician responsible for the quality assurance activities; (3) A written statement describing the system of ongoing quality assurance activities, including, but not limited to, the following: (a) Problem assessment, identification, selection, and study; (b) Corrective action, monitoring, evaluation, and reassessment; and (c) Interpretation and analysis of patterns of care rendered to individual patients by individual providers; (4) A written statement describing the system of focused quality assurance activities based on representative samples of the enrolled population which identifies method of topic selection, study, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and report format; and (5) A written plan for taking appropriate corrective action whenever, as determined by the quality assurance program, inappropriate or substandard services have been provided or services which should have been furnished have not been provided. Each health maintenance organization shall record proceedings of formal quality assurance program activities and maintain documentation in a confidential manner. Quality assurance program minutes shall be available to the Department of Health and Human Services. Each health maintenance organization shall also establish a mechanism for periodic reporting of quality assurance program activities to the governing body of the health maintenance organization, the providers, and appropriate staff. History: Laws 1990, LB 1136, § 36; Laws 1996, LB 1044, § 247; Laws 2007, LB296, § 186.