PQA Recognizes Six Medicare Plans for Excellence in Medication Use and Safety Based on CMS' Star Ratings

PRESS RELEASE

Springfield, VA. (May 29, 2014) -Six Medicare plans have been selected to receive the PQA 4th Annual Quality Award. This award recognizes their achievement of a 5-star rating on the PQA measures of medication safety and appropriate use that are included in the CMS Star Rating Program. Awardees are also required to achieve at least a 4.5-star summary plan rating. This year's award recipients are: Chinese Community Health Plan of California, Humana's Medicare plan in Illinois, and four Kaiser Permanente regions (California, Colorado, Hawaii and the Mid-Atlantic region).

The Awards Recognition Program was held May 29th in conjunction with the Pharmacy Quality Alliance's Annual Meeting and Best Practices Forum. This is the fourth year that PQA, as a consensus-based, multi-stakeholder organization, has provided this unique recognition to top health plans providing Medicare prescription services. PQA is pleased to recognize these organizations as examples of excellence in appropriate and safe medication use.

Laura Cranston, PQA's Executive Director, emphasized the uniqueness of this award: "This award is based solely on publicly available quality scores. The effective use of medications is a top issue for all providers, and it is also extremely important within the Medicare program. PQA seeks to hold these organizations up as examples in the achievement of top medication management performance in the care of their Medicare members. The high standards for excellence set forth in the awards criteria means that these recipients are truly outstanding in their medication management of patients and in their practices to ensure optimal medication outcomes."

PQA is pleased that pharmacy leaders from these six Medicare plans that have achieved a 5-star rating on the PQA medication-based metrics will join together for a panel discussion on Friday morning, May 30th to share best practices and insights that have enabled them to achieve this top rating.

There are five PQA-endorsed quality measures that are used within the CMS' Medicare Star Ratings program and several used in the Display Ratings program. Details on these measures are available at the PQA website: www.PQAalliance.org

PQA acknowledges the support of Lilly USA for the fourth year in a row of the Quality Awards Program. Lilly has been a member of PQA since its inception and provides leadership and expertise on a number of PQA workgroups.