NCQA is a private, not-for-profit association that evaluates and accredits health plans.  The accreditation process is voluntary, and NCQA has developed performance measures to evaluate the quality of care provided by health plans in areas such as patient safety, confidentiality, consumer protection, access, service, and continuous improvement.  NCQA provides a tool for health plans to measure their performance against other health plans, the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS®).  The only breast cancer-specific HEDIS® measure is for screening and estimates the percentage of eligible women that received screening as recommended.

The National Quality Forum is a private, not-for-profit membership organization created to develop and implement a national strategy for health care quality measurement and reporting.  There are over 250 organizations with membership in one of the four NQF member councils, representing the consumer, purchaser, provider and health plan, and research and quality improvement stakeholder groups.  NQF endorses consensus-based national standards for measurement and public reporting of health care performance data that provide meaningful information about whether care is safe, timely, beneficial, patient-centered, equitable, and efficient.  One of the NQF projects is on the quality of cancer care measures, and the three cancer care focus areas include breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and symptom management and end-of-life care.

"Never-Events" are medical mistakes that should never occur under any circumstance.

The National Health Plan Collaborative (NHPC) is a project bringing together 11 major health insurance companies, in partnership with organizations from the public and private sectors, to identify ways to improve the quality of health care for racially and ethnically diverse populations. Together, member health plans reach more than 87-million Americans.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research. Helping to lead the way toward important medical discoveries that improve people's health and save lives, NIH scientists investigate ways to prevent disease as well as the causes, treatments, and even cures for common and rare diseases.