|
Press Release
A Medical Center Awarded NCQA Accreditation
For Release October 21, 2003
WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System (GLA) is one of a small number of medical centers nation-wide to earn full accreditation by the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) Human Research Protection Program (HRPP). The independent, external accreditation affirms that the medical centers’ research programs comply with all federal regulations designed to protect human research participants.
VA’s Office of Research and Development is the first research organization to require all its sites to undergo the independent NCQA accreditation process. All VA medical centers conducting human research will undergo the process by September 2005.
"We are making the safety and rights of human research participants a top priority," said Dr. Nelda Wray, VA’s chief research and development officer. "The accreditation process has strengthened our ongoing efforts to protect volunteers whose contributions to medical advances benefit us all. We view obtaining NCQA accreditation as another mark of excellence."
NCQA’s HRPP accreditation program establishes standards of HRPP performance and evaluates a Medical Center’s performance in relation to those standards through independent, external review. The NCQA accreditation program provides a credible, objective framework for ensuring that processes are in place to inform and protect the thousands of volunteer human participants who participate in VA research activities every year.
To become accredited by NCQA, VA research sites are required to meet standards addressing institutional responsibilities, institutional review board structure and operations, consideration of risks and benefits, and informed consent. NCQA standards are intended to help the medical centers achieve the highest level of performance possible and create an environment of continuous improvement.
"NCQA standards are designed to stimulate continuous, systematic, and organization-wide improvement in human research protections and to ensure that studies’ risks and benefits are thoroughly weighed, that volunteers are properly informed, that adverse events are carefully monitored, and that research risks are minimized," said Jessica Briefer French, assistant vice president, human research protection. "Accreditation demonstrates these medical centers’ commitment to safeguarding the interests of human research participants."
###
|
