Improving Quality

Cultivating the use of CAHPS surveys for QI purposes is one of the key objectives for the CAHPS grants. To support that goal, this section offers access to pertinent reports and research papers developed by members of the CAHPS Consortium, as well as pages within this site that address QI issues. More guidance, resources, and information relevant to the use of CAHPS surveys to improve quality will be added to this section over time.

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The CAHPS Improvement Guide

The CAHPS Improvement Guide is a comprehensive resource for health plans, medical groups, and other providers seeking to improve their performance in the domains of quality measured by CAHPS surveys. You may want to use this guide to help your organization:

• Cultivate an environment that encourages and sustains quality improvement;
• Analyze the results of CAHPS surveys to identify strengths and weaknesses;
  and
• Develop strategies for improving performance.

This Web-based guide grew out of a report by the Harvard Team that was published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in 2003.

Go to The CAHPS Improvement Guide

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Projects & Reports

• Case Studies of Quality Improvement Initiatives  – In 2007, RAND began releasing a series of case studies of quality improvement initiatives designed to improve patients’ experiences with care.
• Supplemental Survey Items for Quality Improvement - In 2005, the RAND Team developed a set of supplemental items for the CAHPS Health Plan Survey designed to help plans develop and monitor quality improvement efforts in several areas of care. This work was done in response to feedback from health plans regarding their need for more actionable items.
• CAHPS In-Center Hemodialysis Quality Improvement Project - The grantees and four ESRD Networks have been working with a number of dialysis facilities to develop quality improvement initiatives based on CAHPS survey data.

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Meetings & Webcasts

• Improving Your Performance on the CAHPS Health Plan Survey – Experts from the CAHPS team discussed how to use the CAHPS Health Plan Survey to identify organizational strengths and weaknesses and how to design and implement an action plan for improving patients’ experiences.
• Patient Experience & Patient Safety Culture: 11th CAHPS & 1st SOPS User Group Meeting – Several speakers addressed using CAHPS surveys to improve patients’ experiences with medical groups and hospitals.
• Improving Patient Care: How Medical Practices Are Using New CAHPS Surveys for Ambulatory Settings – Medical group leaders from Massachusetts and Minnesota shared their experiences using group-level CAHPS instruments to measure and improve quality of care. 
• CAHPS in the States: Collaboration and Innovation To Maximize Public Resources – Among other topics, a director of a New York agency reviewed an initiative to help Medicaid health plans analyze and improve their performance on the CAHPS Health Plan Survey measures.
• CAHPS Across the Health Care Continuum: 9^th National CAHPS User Group Meeting – Various speakers discussed the use of CAHPS surveys to improve quality at the level of health plans and medical groups. 

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Related Resources

• Profiles of High-Performing Family- and Patient-Centered Academic Medical Centers – Dale Shaller (Yale Team) and Charles Darby (former AHRQ project officer for CAHPS) produced six case studies for the Picker Institute that document how academic medical centers can achieve high levels of family- and patient-centered care. Each profile offers real-world, operational examples of how core elements of family- and patient- centered care are brought to life in practice. A separate summary analysis of the key elements contributing to family- and patient-centered care across all six centers is also available.
• Go Guide – Transform Care in Six Steps: The Patient- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) Methodology – The Innovation Center at Magee-Womens Hospital of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has developed a guide to using their patient- and family-centered care methodology to transform hospital care.
• Patient-Centered Care: What Does It Take? – In a paper commissioned by the Picker Institute, Dale Shaller (Yale Team) explored what is needed for widespread implementation of patient-centered care in inpatient and ambulatory care settings.  The findings were based on interviews conducted with experts in designing or implementing strategies for achieving excellence in patient-centered care.
• Providing Performance Feedback to Individual Physicians: Current Practice and Emerging Lessons --In a working paper, RAND researchers document what is known to date about reporting quality data back to physicians. This paper was based on a literature review as well as key informant interviews. Participating researchers included members of the CAHPS RAND Team.

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