The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) develop, implement and administer several different CAHPS patient experience surveys. These surveys ask patients (or in some cases their families) about their experiences with, and ratings of, their health care providers and plans, including hospitals, home health care agencies, doctors, and health and drug plans, among others. The surveys focus on matters that patients themselves say are important to them and for which patients are the best and/or only source of information. CMS publicly reports the results of its patient experience surveys, and some surveys affect payments to CMS providers. (cms.gov)
Patient experience results are becoming increasingly tied to CMS reimbursement and public reporting and can have a significant financial and/or public relations impact on your organization. To best prepare for your CAHPS requirements, Brenmor provides a variety of survey approaches to continuously identify, improve and monitor operational weaknesses down to the provider level. Our robust aggregate and real-time reporting tools offer unique ways to distribute survey results that will drive accountability and engagement across all of your practices.
Many of the CMS patient experience surveys are in the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) family of surveys. CAHPS surveys ask consumers and patients to report on and evaluate their health care experiences. Surveys cover topics important to consumers and focus on those aspects of quality that consumers are best qualified to assess.
CAHPS Survey Facts
CAHPS for MIPS
The Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) is one track of the Quality Payment Program, where clinicians earn a performance-based payment adjustment to their Medicare payment. Clinicians participating in MIPS have the flexibility to choose the measures and activities that are most meaningful to their practice to demonstrate performance. The CAHPS for MIPS survey is an optional quality measure that groups participating in MIPS can elect to administer. It would count, in the quality performance category, as a patient experience measure. Additionally, a MIPS eligible clinician may also be awarded points under the improvement activities performance category for administering the survey.
CG-CAHPS
CAHPS Clinician & Group Visit Survey asks patients to report on their experiences with providers and office staff at their most recent visit to a doctor’s office. This instrument was designed in response to feedback from stakeholders regarding the need for a CAHPS survey that focuses on experiences during a single visit rather than over a period of time. More targeted feedback about a visit can provide medical practices with valuable information for monitoring and improvement.
CAHPS PCMH Survey
The PCMH (Patient Centered Medical Home) CAHPS Survey includes standardized questionnaires for adults and children in primary care settings. Although this survey could be used by any physician practice, it is intended to be especially useful for physician practices that have adopted features of a patient-centered medical home. Groups can earn PCMH “recognition” and “distinction” status by implementing optional PCMH supplemental items.
CAHPS for ACOs
The CAHPS Survey for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) lets accountable care organizations participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program and Next Generation ACO Model meet their requirement to measure the seven required patient experience-of-care summary survey measures by asking patients about the interpersonal aspects of health care—aspects for which patients may be the best, if not the only source of information, and areas that patients have identified as being important to them. ACOs are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to their Medicare patients.