Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #112081

William G. Lehrman, PhD¹, Elizabeth Goldstein, PhD¹, Marybeth Farquhar, MSN², and Marc N. Elliott, PhD³. (1) Division of Beneficiary Analysis, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Mail Stop S1-13-05, 7500 Security Blvd., Baltimore, MD 21244-1850, 410-786-1037, wlehrman@cms.hhs.gov, (2) Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 540 Gaither Road, Rockville, MD 20850, (3) RAND Health, 1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407

Hospital CAHPS® (HCAHPS®) is the primary vehicle for carrying out the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' policy of publicly reporting patients' perspectives of their care in a manner that will permit fair comparisons of hospitals.

HCAHPS continues to be developed, tested and refined in anticipation of its national launch. We present findings from recent field testing of the survey. These will include: research findings on the effect of mode of administration (mail, telephone, mixed mail and telephone, and active Interactive Voice Recognition) on patients' responses; how intervening hospital stays affect responses; and, the effect of integrating HCAHPS into existing hospital surveys.

In addition, we brief the audience on the current status of HCAHPS, preview the next steps to national implementation of the survey and public reporting of results, and discuss how the involvement of organizations other than hospitals could amplify the effect of public reporting.

Learning Objectives:

• In this session, participants will learn about how factors such as mode of administration affect the responses of patients on HCAHPS, the standardized national survey of patients' perspectives of their hospital care. In addition, participants will be updated on the survey as it moves toward national implementaion.

Keywords: Hospitals, Patient Perspective

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation