Years ago, when Health Maintenance Organizations first began carving out segments of their benefit coverage to ancillary groups specializing in specific areas of care, those organizations could ride on the regulatory coattails of the delegating HMO. Single specialty providers, in many cases, must now be licensed or accredited in their own right, in addition to being subject to audits by delegating HMOs.

Since many full service HMOs with whom we contract delegate their credentialing functions to us, we were eager to seek NCQA CVO Accreditation. On January 21, 1999, we were awarded certification by NCQA as a Credentialing Verification Organization for 10 out of 10 elements.

NCQA is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to evaluate and report on the quality of the nation's managed care organizations. At this time, NCQA does not review and offer accreditation to single specialty eye care organizations. If this should change, OptiCare will immediately initiate the review process and seek accreditation. In the meantime, all of our policies and procedures under which we operate are modeled after NCQA guidelines.

Some states require that we be licensed as a single specialty HMO, others as a Third Party Administrator, while still others require reporting under their PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) or IPA (Independent Practice Association) guidelines. OptiCare is experienced in successfully applying for and obtaining the necessary licensures or designations that are required in each market that we serve.

As one of the nation's largest providers of medical surgical eye care administration, we are often required to be accredited as a Utilization Review Agent. This process varies from state to state; however, OptiCare has all of the appropriate policies, procedures and documentation in place. We have been successful in obtaining Utilization Review Agent status each and every time we have made application.

OptiCare follows CMS (formerly HCFA), CCI, AAO, NOC and NCQA guidelines. We routinely undergo rigorous audit reviews by the health plans with whom we contract and we welcome onsite inspection of our operations.