The National Committee for Quality Assurance's (NCQA) Diabetes Physician Recognition Program (DPRP), cosponsored by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), is a voluntary program for individual physicians or physician groups that provide care to people with diabetes. Physicians, in all settings, can achieve Recognition by submitting data that demonstrates they are providing quality diabetes care. The Program assesses key measures that were carefully defined and tested for their relationship to improved care for people with diabetes.

• Improve care given to people with diabetes by identifying physicians and groups who are providing quality diabetes care
• Motivate other physicians and groups to document and improve their delivery of diabetes care

Any individual physician (MD or DO) or physician group who provides direct, continuing care for at least 35 patients with diabetes in a 12-month period may apply for Recognition.

Applying for Recognition requires:

1) completing an application form with general information about how care is provided to people with diabetes,

2) abstracting medical record or administrative system data for 35 of each physician's patients with diabetes, and [OPTIONAL] administering a patient survey to those patients for whom medical record data was abstracted. For more detailed information about eligibility and the application process, including applicable fees, please visit NCQA's website www.ncqa.org/dprp, call 202/955-1721 or send e-mail to dprp@ncqa.org.

Abstracted records will be assessed for performance on 11 key measures of care for adult patients and 8 key measures of care for pediatric patients. A physician does not have to "pass" every measure to achieve Recognition. In order to "pass" any one measure, a proportion of your patients with diabetes must have received/achieved the measure. The weighting for each measure is noted on the listing of measures to allow applicants to gauge their performance before submitting their application. For more detailed information on key measures, please visit NCQA's website www.ncqa.org/dprp, call 202/955-1721 or send e-mail to dprp@ncqa.org.

More than 1,500 physicians have already achieved Recognition, impacting care to an estimated 500,000 patients with diabetes. Aggregate performance results between 1997 and 2001 indicate that DPRP Recognized physicians provide quality care and have improved care delivery:

• The average rate of patients with diabetes who had Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels of less than 8% increased from 50% to 70%
• The rate of patients with diabetes who had properly controlled LDL cholesterol gained 35 percentage points (37% to 72%)
• The rate of patients with diabetes monitored for kidney disease rose from 60 to 84%

Recognized physicians are publicized through both traditional print media and on NCQA's website (www.ncqa.org/dprp). Consumers also locate Recognized physicians and groups through ADA's popular web site (over 1.0 million visitors per month in 2000) and 1-800-DIABETES National Call Center (over 500 calls per month in 2000 seeking referral to a physician). Patients seeking a physician are only referred to Recognized physicians.

For more detailed information, you can visit NCQA's website www.ncqa.org/dprp, call 202/955-1721 or send e-mail to dprp@ncqa.org. To order application materials, please call 1-888-275-7585 or go to NCQA's online publication Web site (www.ncqa.org/communications/publications/dprppubs.htm.)