Question

Please explain how CAHPS improves health care?

Answer 1

CAHPS

CAHPS is abbreviated as Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems.

CAHPS is defined as the set of surveys or questionnaire used by the american health care quality assurance agencies that asks the patient about their health care experiences in the medical institution.

CAHPS can improve the healthcare in different ways :

This include communication with doctors ,understanding medication instructions and coordination of healthcare needs.

The survey asks patients to rate their experiences with their health plan, experience receiving care from providers and experience accessing care

From this survey , the healthcare professionals get any idea about the patients problem or how they are uncomfortable with the facilities of the hospital and the health care professionals.

In this way they can understand their negatives , and work to improve them.

Patient experience survey focus on how patients experienced or perceived key aspects of their care, how satisfied they are with the care etc.

The surveys are designed to reliably assess the experiences of a large sample of patients

These surveys cover topics that are important to consumers and focus on the communication skills of providers and ease of access to health care services

The Hospital CAHPS surveys is conducted to capture the patients experience of communication with doctors and nurses, responsiveness of hospital staff , communication about their medicines, cleanliness of the hospital discharge information, transition to post hospital care and overall rating of the hospital.

Surveys can be conducted in 4 ways

1. Mail

2. Telephone

3. Mixed (mail with telephone follow up)

4. Interactive voice response

Thus CAHPS plays an important role in the healthcare society to improve the patient care and ensure patient's satisfaction.