The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) is a standardized program designed to measure and publicly report patients’ experiences with various healthcare services. Developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), these surveys use scientifically rigorous methods to ensure data is comparable across different providers. The timing of administration is highly dependent on the specific type of care being measured. This schedule is dictated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the survey’s use in quality assessment and value-based purchasing programs.
Understanding CAHPS Survey Variations
The term “CAHPS” functions as an umbrella for a family of distinct surveys, each tailored to a specific healthcare setting, which dictates its administration window.
The Hospital CAHPS (HCAHPS) survey focuses on the inpatient experience, measuring aspects like communication with nurses and doctors, and the cleanliness of the hospital environment. It is administered to a random sample of patients between 48 hours and 42 days following their discharge from a general acute care hospital.
The Health Plan CAHPS targets the experiences of enrollees in health insurance plans, such as Medicare Advantage or Medicaid. This survey assesses how easily patients can get needed care and specialists, and the quality of customer service. The Clinician & Group CAHPS (CG-CAHPS) survey measures patient experience with a specific doctor or medical group in an outpatient setting.
These separate survey instruments ensure that the questions asked are relevant to the patient’s care setting. For instance, the CAHPS Hospice Survey is administered to the deceased patient’s primary informal caregiver, reflecting the unique nature of hospice care.
Annual Data Collection Timelines
The administration timeline for CAHPS surveys is not a single, unified schedule but rather a series of continuous or quarterly cycles specific to each version.
The HCAHPS survey for hospitals is administered continuously throughout the year, with a patient’s eligibility beginning immediately after discharge. Hospitals must collect data for a full 12-month period for their public reporting scores to be generated.
Health Plan CAHPS, including surveys for Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug Plans, generally follows a specific annual period, often administered between February and June. This defined window allows CMS to gather and standardize the data for comparison and use in quality ratings. The patient experience being measured, known as the “look-back period,” typically covers the 12 months prior to the survey administration month.
For the Clinician & Group CAHPS, the look-back period often measures the patient’s experience over the previous six months to a year. This is a shorter window than some other surveys, reflecting the more frequent, episodic nature of ambulatory care. The CAHPS Hospice Survey has a unique timeline; data collection for a sampled decedent’s caregiver begins two months after the patient’s death and must be completed within 49 days of the initial contact.
The Administration Process and Reporting Cycle
CAHPS surveys must be administered according to strict, standardized protocols to ensure data integrity and comparability across providers nationwide. Federal programs mandate that healthcare organizations contract with approved, certified survey vendors to conduct the data collection. These vendors are responsible for adhering to the specific sampling requirements and approved modes of administration.
The modes of administration include mail-only, telephone-only, or a mixed-mode approach. Mixed-mode often begins with a mailed survey followed by a telephone follow-up for non-responders. The timing of contact and follow-ups is tightly controlled to maximize response rates while maintaining scientific rigor. A new Web-Mail mode is also being adopted for some surveys, such as the Hospice CAHPS, allowing for an email option.
Following data collection, a time lag occurs before the results are made public. This lag, which can be several months, is necessary for data cleaning, standardization, and risk adjustment. CMS and AHRQ aggregate the raw data, apply statistical adjustments, and then publish the scores on government websites like Care Compare. For HCAHPS, the results based on a rolling 12-month period are published quarterly.