Summary of the 2020 AHRQ research meeting on ‘advancing methods of implementing and evaluating patient experience improvement using consumer assessment of healthcare providers and systems (CAHPS®) surveys’

ABSTRACT

Background

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality held a research meeting on using Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) data for quality improvement (QI) and evaluating such efforts.

Topics Covered.

Meeting addressed: 1)What has been learned about organizational factors/environment needed to improve patient experience? 2)How have organizations used data to improve patient experience? 3)What can evaluations using CAHPS data teach us about implementing successful programs to improve patient experience?

Key Themes

Providers and stakeholders need to be engaged early and often, standardize QI processes, complement CAHPS data with other data, and compile dashboards of CAHPS scores to identify and track improvement. Rigorous study designs are valuable, but much can be learned and accomplished through practical organization-level studies.

KEYWORDS:

• CAHPS
• patient-centeredness
• patient experience
• quality improvement
• surveys

Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank and acknowledge all the panel organizers, presenters and participants that attended the meeting.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

Concept and design (D Quigley, L Rybowski, D Shaller, S Edgman-Levitan, R Hays); acquisition of data (D Quigley, N Qureshi); analysis and interpretation of data (D Quigley, N Qureshi); drafting of the manuscript (D Quigley, N Qureshi); critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content (D Quigley, L Rybowski, D Shaller, S Edgman-Levitan, P Cleary, R Hays); provision of patients or study materials (D Quigley); obtaining funding (D Quigley, R Hays, P Cleary); administrative, technical, or logistic support (D Quigley, N Qureshi); and supervision (D Quigley, R Hays). The authors are solely responsible for this document’s contents, findings, and conclusions, which do not necessarily represent the views of AHRQ. Readers should not interpret any statement in this paper as an official position of AHRQ or of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded under cooperative agreements [U18 HS025920 and U18 HS016978] from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.