About CAHPS

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NOTE: The contract that supports the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) program expired on June 27, 2012. This will result in a delay in updating the data that compose the CAHPS Database for the SECOND HALF OF CALENDAR YEAR 2012. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is now working to award a new CAHPS contract, and when it is in place, the benchmarking database will be updated with the latest data available, including data collected in 2012.

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The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) program is a multi-year initiative of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to support and promote the assessment of consumers' experiences with health care. First launched in October 1995, the program has expanded beyond its original focus on health plans to address a range of health care services and meet the information needs of health care consumers, purchasers, health plans, providers, and policymakers.

The goals of the CAHPS program are twofold:

• Develop standardized patient surveys that can be used to compare results across sponsors and over time.
• Generate tools and resources that sponsors can use to produce understandable and usable comparative information for both consumers and health care providers.

The various CAHPS surveys ask consumers and patients to report on and evaluate their experiences with health care. These surveys cover topics that are important to consumers and focus on aspects of quality that consumers are best qualified to assess, such as the communication skills of providers and ease of access to health care services.

All CAHPS surveys are in the public domain, which means that anyone can download and use these surveys to assess experiences with care. Users of CAHPS survey results include patients and consumers, quality monitors and regulators, provider organizations, health plans, community collaboratives, and public and private purchasers of health care. These individuals and organizations use the survey results to inform their decisions and to improve the quality of health care services.

CAHPS Surveys

Learn more about the CAHPS surveys:

Clinician & Group
Health Plan
In-Center Hemodialysis

NOTE: The Health Plan and In-Center Hemodialysis Surveys are not available online at this time. AHRQ is in the process of reestablishing the timeframe and frequency for future periods for submission and reporting of this data and plans to inform users/those interested once those dates have been determined.

The CAHPS program has produced several additional surveys that are not currently displayed below. To obtain copies of the American Indian Survey, Dental Plan Survey, Experiences of Care & Health Outcomes (ECHO) Survey, or Nursing Home Surveys, please send a request to https://info.ahrq.gov. Two CAHPS surveys are available from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services:

For a copy of the Hospital Survey, please visit www.hcahpsonline.org .

For a copy of the Home Health Care Survey, visit https://www.homehealthcahps.org/ .

CAHPS Database

The CAHPS Database is a compilation of survey results from a large pool of survey users into a national database. The database enables participants to compare their own results to relevant benchmarks. The CAHPS Database contains comparative data for the CAHPS Health Plan (HP) Survey and the CAHPS Clinician & Group (CG) Survey and presents a variety of results, such as composite measures and individual survey items, organized according to survey version and field period.