Five Stars
CENTERS FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVICES
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), along with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), developed the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) Survey, also known as Hospital CAHPS®, to provide a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients’ perspectives on hospital care. The HCAHPS Survey is administered to a random sample of patients continuously throughout the year. CMS cleans, adjusts and analyzes the data, then publicly reports the results.
The HCAHPS Survey is 29 questions in length—19 substantive items that encompass critical aspects of the hospital experience, 3 screening questions to skip patients to appropriate questions, and 7 demographic items that are used for adjusting the mix of patients across hospitals for analytical purposes. CMS currently reports results for 6 composite topics, 2 individual topics and 2 global topics, as follows….