1.    The health maintenance organization shall establish procedures to assure that the health care services provided to enrollees will be rendered under reasonable standards of quality of care consistent with prevailing professionally recognized standards of medical practice. The procedures must include mechanisms to assure availability, accessibility, and continuity of care.

2.    The health maintenance organization must have an ongoing internal quality assurance program to monitor and evaluate its health care services, including primary and specialist physician services, and ancillary and preventive health care services, across all institutional and noninstitutional settings. The program must include, at a minimum, the following:

a.    A written statement of goals and objectives which emphasizes improved health status in evaluating the quality of care rendered to enrollees.

b.    A written quality assurance plan which describes the following:

(1) The health maintenance organization’s scope and purpose in quality assurance.

(2) The organizational structure responsible for quality assurance activities.

(3) Contractual arrangements, when appropriate, for delegation of quality assurance activities.

(4) Confidentiality policies and procedures. (5) A system of ongoing evaluation activities.

(6) A system of focused evaluation activities.

(7) A system for credentialing providers and performing peer review activities.

(8) Duties and responsibilities of the designated physician responsible for the quality assurance activities.

c.    A written statement describing the system of ongoing quality assurance activities, including:

(1) Problem assessment, identification, selection, and study.

(2) Corrective action, monitoring, evaluation, and reassessment.

(3) Interpretation and analysis of patterns of care rendered to individual patients by individual providers.

d.    A written statement describing the system of focused quality assurance activities based on representative samples of the enrolled population which identifies method of topic selection, study, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and report format.

e.    Written plans for taking appropriate corrective action whenever, as determined by the quality assurance program, inappropriate or substandard services have been provided or services which should have been furnished have not been provided.

3.    The organization shall record proceedings of formal quality assurance program activities and maintain documentation in a confidential manner. Quality assurance program minutes must be available to the commissioner.

4.    The organization shall ensure the use and maintenance of an adequate patient record system which will facilitate documentation and retrieval of clinical information for the purpose of the health maintenance organization evaluating continuity and coordination    of patient care and assessing the quality of health and medical care provided to enrollees.

5.    Enrollee clinical records must be available to the commissioner or an authorized designee for examination and review to ascertain compliance with this section, or as deemed necessary by the commissioner. The clinical records are confidential and are not subject to section 44-04-18, except upon written consent for disclosure by the enrollee or the enrollee’s authorized representative.

6.    The organization shall establish a mechanism for periodic reporting of quality assurance program activities to the governing body, providers, and appropriate organization staff.