23 Mar What is Data Aggregator Validation (DAV) for Health Payers?

Last August, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) announced the launch of its Data Aggregator Validation (DAV) program, which is geared towards ensuring the validity of clinical data used for quality reporting and other initiatives.

The program enables more data and more data sources to be trusted, useful, and comparable, resulting in decreased burden, more streamlined processes between healthcare segments and improved care quality.

Essentially NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation program evaluates the ingestion, transformation and output of clinical data to support data integrity. This gives health payers confidence in the validity of the clinical data they are using for quality reporting, value-based contracting, closing gaps in care and other initiatives

Specifically, it validates electronic clinical data that health payers collect and share with vendors and health care organizations that undergo an audit for reporting NCQA’s HEDIS measures.

Data from data streams validated by NCQA can be used as standard supplemental data in HEDIS reporting, eliminating the need for primary source verification (PSV) during the HEDIS audit process. This saves time and money for aggregators, provider organizations and health plans.

“Our Data Aggregator Validation program was formed to address what payers were telling us, that HEDIS audits of clinical data from aggregator vendors could prove too burdensome,” said Rick Moore, NCQA Chief Information Officer, in this press release. “Now, NCQA can validate an aggregator’s data sources prior to a HEDIS reporting year, and then health plans may use the approved sources as standard supplemental data without requiring more audits at the plan level.”

IMAT Solutions is the first, and currently only, technology company to achieve full DAV designation from NCQA.

As highlighted by Healthcare Dive, the designation of the IMAT platform will provide DAV-validated clinical data for more than 50 primary sites. This represents primary care providers for more than 70 percent of the AE-attributed Medicaid beneficiaries in Rhode Island. This capability is being extended to a larger audience of health payers across the U.S., as DAV-validated data becomes more accepted in the marketplace.

Learn more about how IMAT helps health payers to use data for driving the most meaningful care and business outcomes.