With over 120 sites, CityMD is the leading urgent care provider in the New York metropolitan area and has earned NCQA Patient-Centered Connected Care Recognition for all of its eligible urgent care centers in New York, New Jersey and Seattle, Washington.

NCQA took a road trip to CityMD headquarters, to talk about how it coordinates care between patients, specialists and primary care physicians.

In this episode of Inside Health Care, guest host Paige Cook, NCQA’s Director of Business Development, talks with Dr. Frank Illuzzi, CityMD’s Chief Medical Officer, about growth, challenges and the Recognition journey.

Click the link to listen to their conversation. Don’t forget to rate us!

How do we help employers help their employees?

The employer market covers 180 million people in the United States—the largest payer of health care services.

On this episode of “Inside Health Care”, NCQA welcomes Ellen Kelsay, Chief Strategy Officer for the National Business Group on Health. Based in Washington, D.C, the Business Group is a nonprofit membership-based organization that works with large self-funded employers on a variety of health and well-being related issues.

In this episode, Ellen discusses how the Business Group is there to help companies improve health care quality among their employees—this impacts employee productivity, engagement, wellness and more.

Improvements are being made but there is still a gap—so, what is the employer’s role? What are the challenges?

Listen to the episode below to find out more. Be sure to rate us where you listen to podcasts!

NCQA President Peggy O’Kane discusses her appointment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Quality Summit group. Peggy is serving among some of the nation’s top health care policy leaders to advise the government on the challenges ahead and the proposed solutions to address them. NCQA Public Policy Vice President Frank Micciche asks the questions. The two also discuss the on-again, off-again controversial proposals to assign each American with a number–a unique patient identifier.

We are facing a national crisis. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, each day more than 130 people in the United States die from an opioid overdose. How are health care professionals tackling this issue?

On this episode of “Inside Health Care,” we chat with Dr. Daniel Alford, Professor of Medicine and course director for Boston University School of Medicine’s “SCOPE of Pain” safer opioid-prescribing program. SCOPE of Pain is a series of continuing medical/nursing education activities designed to help safely and effectively manage patients with acute and/or chronic pain with opioid analgesics, when appropriate.

In this episode, Dr. Alford discusses how SCOPE of Pain addresses medical school and residency teaching gaps by training health care professionals—more than 160,000 thus far—how to prescribe and use opioids safely and effectively. Dr. Alford also discusses how to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of opioids and proposes his solution to ending the opioid crisis.

Listen to the episode below to hear more—and don’t forget to rate us where you listen to podcasts!

On this edition of “Inside Health Care” we catch up with NCQA Founder and President, Peggy O’ Kane at the Digital Quality Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. O’Kane visits with NCQA Asst. Vice President Andy Reynolds, External Relations. They discuss the Summit, the future of Digital Quality and much more.

Please be sure to give us a rating on your podcast player to help us increase the reach of “Inside Health Care”. You’ll want to subscribe to the podcast, too. We feature experts from across the health care industry with short, timely and relevant interviews.

Peggy’s already planning her next visit. We hope you will stay tuned.