The HCAHPS survey asks 29 questions to discharged patients about their recent hospital stay. The survey contains 19 fundamental questions about fundamental aspects of the patient experience at the hospital (communication with nurses and doctors, the responsiveness of hospital staff, the cleanliness and tranquility of the hospital environment, communication about medications, information about hospital discharge, the overall rating of the hospital and whether they would recommend the hospital). The survey also includes three elements to direct patients to relevant questions, five elements to adapt to the variety of patients in hospitals, and two elements that support the reports required by Congress. While many hospitals have collected patient satisfaction information for internal use, until HCAHPS, there was no national standard for collecting and publishing information on patient experience with regard to health care that would allow valid comparisons between hospitals at the local and regional levels.
and national. Multivariate models that were adjusted to the characteristics of the hospital were used to evaluate the independent relationships between patient satisfaction and measures of surgical efficiency and quality. With these objectives in mind, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the HCAHPS project team have taken important steps to ensure that the survey is credible, useful and practical. There is widespread concern that patient satisfaction outcomes may have a poor or even negative correlation with the quality of surgical care, which could lead to drawbacks in efforts to improve the patient experience with other surgical quality measures.
Starting in 2002, CMS partnered with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), another agency of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, to develop and test the HCAHPS survey.
