National Decision Support Company enters agreement to deliver American College of Cardiology Appropriate Use Criteria

MADISON, Wis., Sept. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- National Decision Support Company (NDSC) announced today that it has entered an agreement with the American College of Cardiology (ACC) to make the ACC Cardiac Imaging Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) available to its customer base.

The Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (H.R. 43032) requires ordering professionals to consult AUC when ordering advanced imaging. Only AUC developed by entities meeting the qualified provider-led entity (qPLE) standards can be used under the program.

On June 15, the ACC was informed that it meets the qPLE requirements to develop and modify AUC under the Medicare AUC program for advanced diagnostic imaging. The ACC AUC join NDSC's foundational criteria set delivered through the newly announced CareSelect Imaging Solution. CareSelect Imaging contains AUC sets from multiple qPLE including the American College of Radiology, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and now the American College of Cardiology.

"NDSC's relationships with EMR vendors expands the availability of the ACC's AUC to healthcare providers nationwide, allowing them to leverage our criteria for use as part of a PAMA compliant solution while empowering quality improvement, imaging stewardship and participation in value based payment models," said Robert C. Hendel, M.D., FACC, American College of Cardiology AUC Implementation and Evaluation Committee Chair. 

CareSelect Imaging is the only AUC delivery mechanism on the market with complete coverage of qualified Medical Specialty Society published content. The focus on content sourced from Medical Specialty Societies assures providers that criteria are developed through proven processes that reflect the collective experience of providers on a national scale, without bias and independent of economic agendas.

"The addition of the ACC's criteria for Cardiac Imaging expands on the more than 15,000 clinical rules contained in NDSC's AUC library that power imaging stewardship programs at more than 150 health systems nationally," said Bob Cooke, VP of Marketing at NDSC. "CareSelect Imaging delivers AUC from all of the CMS Qualified Medical Specialty Societies and can incorporate additional AUC sets through localization. This comprehensive AUC set enables not only compliance with the provisions of PAMA, but delivery of sophisticated imaging pathways, improvement of the Outpatient Imaging Efficiency metrics of the CMS Hospital Star rating program and even the JACHO requirements for pediatric head trauma assessment before imaging."

The ACC's advanced cardiac imaging AUC are already in use at several NDSC sites and immediately available to all users of NDSC's CareSelect Content Management and Delivery Platform.

More Information about CareSelect Imaging is available at nationaldecisionsupport.com/solution-imaging.html

About the American College of Cardiology
The American College of Cardiology is a 52,000-member medical society that is the professional home for the entire cardiovascular care team. The mission of the College is to transform cardiovascular care and to improve heart health. The ACC leads in the formation of health policy, standards and guidelines. The College operates national registries to measure and improve care, offers cardiovascular accreditation to hospitals and institutions, provides professional medical education, disseminates cardiovascular research and bestows credentials upon cardiovascular specialists who meet stringent qualifications. For more, visit acc.org.

About National Decision Support Company
National Decision Support Company provides enterprise wide Clinical Decision Support solutions that enable more efficient and appropriate care, improve population health, and save money. Our technology platform converts published guidelines from credible, compliant content sources into actionable decision support criteria delivered directly into the EMR workflow.

About CareSelect Imaging
CareSelect Imaging leverages the ACRselect Technology Platform to deliver a comprehensive range of Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) for diagnostic imaging. AUC is sourced from qualified Provider led entities (qPLE) including the American College of Radiology, the American College of Cardiology and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network®. Criteria is delivered directly into the EMR workflow to provide actionable, PAMA compliant decision support in real time.

SOURCE National Decision Support Company