Patient Experience

Patient experience is now measured across the health care continuum via the Consumer Assessment of Health Systems and Providers (CAHPS) survey series. Questions in each survey are customized to fit the setting. Surveys are administered in standardized, uniform ways by setting.

This survey aims to understand the patient perspective on quality in health care. It is specifically designed to measure experience and not satisfaction. Experience is about measuring what actually happened and how often it happened in comparison to what should happen (i.e. available appointments, clear communication, respectful interactions). It is a more comparable measure than satisfaction. Satisfaction is about whether an individual's expectations were met. Expectations are widely variable, unpredictable and unactionable.

WHY

Patient centeredness is one of the key components of hte National Quality Strategy. The surveys are built on two key principles:

The people who receive care are the best and/or only source of information about their experience.
Consumers/patients identified the information as important to them.

WHO

Home health and hospice agencies are required to utilize CAHPS surveys with a few exceptions for size.

WHEN

Ongoing

TO DO

Ensure:

Agency is working with an approved vendor to administer surveys;
Vendor is reporting results;
Agency reviews and utilizes vendor reports for improvement efforts; and
Agency reviews PEPPER reports annually and CMS data quarterly to ensure accuracy.

RISK

Home health and hospice agencies who meet the inclusion criteria will lose 2% of reimbursement from Medicare if they fail to report CAHPS. CAHPS is part of the quality measures used to calculate reimbursement for home health agencies in Value-Based Purchasing states.

RESOURCES

ElevatingHOME-Developed Resources	Public Resources
Partner Resources HomeBridge by CareCentrix (video)	Other Resources (may involve a fee to access)