URAC Core 33 -- Quality Management Committee

Minutes, minutes, minutes.

Throughout URAC's standards and the Program Guides, you'll find references to the need to submit committee minutes to demonstrate compliance with the intent of the standards. This is a good general rule, and it is an imperative when the standard is all about a committee.

Such is the case with URAC's Core 33, describing the requirements for your Quality Management Committee:

The organization has a quality management committee that: (Primary)

(a) Is granted authority for quality management by the organization's governing body; (Secondary)
(b) Provides on-going reporting to the organization’s governing body; (Secondary)
(c) Meets at least quarterly; (Secondary)
(d) Maintains approved minutes of all committee meetings; (Secondary)
(e) If applicable, includes at least one participating provider or receives input from a participating provider committee (such as a Physician Advisory Group); (Secondary)
(f) Provides guidance to staff on quality management priorities and projects; (Secondary)
(g) Approves the quality improvement projects to undertake; (Secondary)
(h) Monitors progress in meeting quality improvement goals; and (Secondary)
(i) Evaluates the effectiveness of the quality management program at least annually. (Primary)

The Program Guide, in my view, understates the role of QM Committee minutes when it suggests only the following documentation for the desktop review stage:

Program description and plan or P&Ps addressing QM oversight of the program.
QM program evaluation or sample meeting minutes reflecting evaluation of program effectiveness.

The demonstration of the evaluation of program effectiveness, required by subsection (i), is not the only thing your submitted minutes should reflect. Why not meet as many of these subsections' requirements as you can with your minutes? Ideally, in addition to your program documentation, you should submit QM Committee minutes from within the past year (documenting participation at that meeting of at least one participating provider) from a meeting or meetings at which the committee provided guidance to staff on quality management priorities and projects, approved the quality improvement projects to undertake, monitored progress in meeting quality improvement goals; and evaluated the effectiveness of the quality management program.

I know that's a mouthful, but my guess is that, if you're doing things correctly, you can find one or two meetings in the last year at which the QM Committee did all of these things. So, it should be no great burden to submit the minutes to the meetings along with your QM Program Description.