HCAHPS Facts
The HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers Systems) survey is the first national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patients’ perspectives of hospital care.
The survey is designed to produce data about patients’ care that allow objective and meaningful comparisons of hospitals on topics that are important to customers. The public reporting and availability of this information creates incentives for hospitals to improve their quality of care. Increasing the transparency of the data will no doubt enhance the accountability of hospitals and healthcare providers.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has carefully designed the survey to be credible, useful and practical. Beginning in 2007 all hospitals subject to the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) must collect and submit data in order to receive the full IPPS annual payment update. IPPS hospitals that fail to report the HCAHPS survey may receive a reduction of as much as 2%.
The HCAHPS survey asks discharged patients 27 questions about their recent hospital stay. Ten of these questions are targeted toward quality of care and include such things as communication, responsiveness, pain management, discharge information and overall hospital ratings. To view an actual survey and compare hospitals go to www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov and click on the Hospital Compare button.
CMS publishes the HCAHPS results on the Hospital Compare website four times per year. December 2009 results are based on 2.3 million completed surveys from 3,766 hospitals, up from 2521 in 2008. To insure that the scores permit fair and accurate comparisons across hospitals CMS and the HCAHPS project team adjust the data to eliminate advantages and disadvantages that might be beyond the hospitals’ control. In addition, a series of quality oversight activities monitors and ensures that the data was collected properly and in a standardized manner.
To learn more about HCAHPS, policy updates and how to participate please visit HCAHPS online, at www.hcahpsonline.org.
