In 2020, Hixny became one of the first health information exchanges (HIEs) to pursue Data Aggregator Validation (DAV) as a participant in an NCQA pilot program. By achieving validation, Hixny verified that its data was of sufficient quality for health plans to use in completing annual HEDIS® reporting.
This year, we successfully completed DAV a second time—with updated requirements, now that the program is out of pilot phase. Hixny earned a renewal through December 2022 and once again demonstrating the trustworthiness, comparability and utility of our clinical data streams for HEDIS® reporting and beyond.
A Rigorous Process
DAV requires both Hixny and our data contributors to take part in rigorous assessments, including primary source verification. We greatly appreciate the assistance and quick turnaround times of the many contributors who provided medical records as part of this effort.
NCQA continues to adjust its validation process to gain the most meaningful results. This year, that meant grouping sources into clusters by electronic health records (EHR) vendor and care setting, and then evaluating samples from each cluster to determine whether all data sources in the same cluster would pass validation.
Ultimately, Hixny successful met the goals of the program, which were:
- To demonstrate adherence to NCQA program standards
- To support health plans’ need for data, without the time and expense previously incurred during the manual data validation process
- To support data contributors by ensuring they are sharing complete and accurate information, which then relieves them of the burden posed by the manual audit process
Our next step is to continue working with our data contributors to improve data quality and completeness—including verifying that source formatting maps properly to NCQA requirements.
