Announcements

AHRQ tool that measures patients' home health care experiences to be implemented by CMS

A tool developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), designed to measure patients' experiences with Medicare-certified home health agencies, is being implemented by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on a voluntary national basis beginning in October 2010. The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) Home Health Care Survey captures patients' perceptions on areas such as patient care, communication between providers and patients, specific care issues (e.g., medications, home safety, and pain), and overall rating of care. It is currently available in five languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Vietnamese. The survey is designed to meet the following goals:

• Create incentives for home health agencies to improve their quality of care through public reporting of survey results.
• Hold health care providers accountable by informing the public about the providers' quality of care.
• Produce standardized data on patients' perspectives of care that allow objective and meaningful comparisons between home health agencies on domains that are important to consumers.

The Home Health Care Survey is part of a family of CAHPS® surveys that asks patients to report on and rate their experiences with health care. The survey, along with implementation instructions from CMS, is available online at http://www.homehealthcahps.org. For technical assistance with the CAHPS® Home Health Care Survey, please send an E-mail to HomeHealthCAHPS@cms.hhs.gov, call (866) 354-0985, or fax (919) 542-7400.

For overall information on CAHPS®, go to https://cahps.ahrq.gov.

Return to Contents
Proceed to Next Article