Many providers often grapple with the question \u2013 Am I delivering quality care services, and what\u2019s the secret rule to improve it? CAHPS Surveys give you the superpower to assess your care quality right from the one who receives it \u2013 your patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAHPS or Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems surveys capture patient experience using a standardized set of survey questions, design, and reporting protocols administered by the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The surveys measure patient experience based on the factors that patients themselves consider important. For instance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The questions are related to the patient\u2019s experience with providers (individual and group), health plans, specific conditions (cancer, surgical, etc.), and facilities (hospitals, nursing homes, hospice, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, quite often, patient experience is confused with patient satisfaction. Patient experience assesses the patients\u2019 interactions across the health care system, and not how satisfied they are with the care. Similarly, CAHPS surveys understand whether the patients received critical aspects of the care during different stages, rather than understanding their satisfaction level and subjective assessment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, before you take a deep dive into CAHPS surveys, let\u2019s look at an important question \u2013 Is it worth the effort? The answer is a big YES. CAHPS has been used as a gold standard for patient experience measurement and has found multiple applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides all these benefits, the adage \u2018If you can\u2019t measure it, you can\u2019t improve it\u2019 rings true. With CAHPS, you know exactly what steps are required to take your care quality a notch higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based on your practice, you can choose relevant survey questions and analyze care across multiple interactions. Using the patients\u2019 feedback, you can identify opportunities to improve care delivery, leading to better customer retention rates and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Implementing a CAHPS Survey takes a bit of planning. It starts right from understanding your objectives, identifying the target audience (e.g., children, adults, or condition-specific patients), choosing the appropriate core and supplement standard survey forms, to selecting the preferred data collection channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAHPS surveys can be administered via in-office paper forms, phone, email, and\/or text messaging. The survey administration methods are recommended by the vendors who are responsible for the certification. However, most common CAHPS surveys, such as HCAHPS and CG \u2013 CAHPS (The Clinical and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), allow either of the different survey delivery methods, i.e., phone, email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In-office hand-outs are the oldest, most common method of collecting patient-reported data. However, paper-based surveys have a higher rate of incomplete distribution rates. In fact, as per the Health Research and Educational Trust trial, paper-based surveys had a 74 percent incomplete distribution rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, in-office hand-outs come with heavy paper costs, higher manual intervention, and staff burnout, which adds to your overhead costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, using phone calls to collect patient data for CAHPS surveys in a busy front office involves a huge risk of violating HIPAA rules. Also, the fact that 67% of people don\u2019t pick up calls from numbers they don\u2019t recognize makes call-based surveys an unlikely choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Owing to the high administrative costs and inefficiencies of paper-based and call surveys, it\u2019s critical to modernize the way we capture patient data for CAHPS surveys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Digital surveys save up considerable administrative costs, streamline operational workflows, and increases response rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s look at the two digital channels to send CAHPS surveys and how CheckinAsyst simplifies the entire process \u2013 right from data collection to response tracking.<\/pre>\n\n\n