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HHS Press Release

Welcome


Welcome back to HCAHPS Executive Insight, a new feature on www.hcahpsonline.org, the official HCAHPS website.

Since public reporting of HCAHPS results commenced on March 28, 2008, a good deal of attention has been directed to the survey and the hospitals participating in it. We are aware of hundreds of media articles and stories about HCAHPS over the past month, and "hits" on the Hospital Compare website jumped dramatically, from an average of 157,500 in the two weeks prior to the debut of HCAHPS, to an average of 1,341,800 in the two weeks after the launch.

In our efforts to inform you about HCAHPS, we are providing a new document that clarifies which quarters of HCAHPS data will be reported, when the quarters will be reported, and whether hospitals may suppress public reporting of this data.

Please also note that CMS is recruiting hospitals to participate in a new study of the feasibility of two possible future modes of survey administration: Active Speech Enabled IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and Internet. We invite your hospital to consider participating in this important project.

Finally, CMS has released a new report on how HCAHPS results are adjusted for the effects of patient-mix. This report also includes the actual patient-mix adjustment coefficients that will be used in the second public reporting of HCAHPS results in July 2008.

As before, we invite you to share (and re-share) the material presented on HCAHPS Executive Insight. But please, when you do so, include the following citation:

HCAHPS Executive Insight. hcahpsonline.org. March 28, 2008. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Baltimore, MD. Month, Date, Year the page was accessed.
http://www.hcahpsonline.org/Executive_Insight/.


Thank you for visiting HCAHPS Executive Insight, and please visit again as we update and add new content. If you have any suggestions for HEI, send us an email at hcahps@azqio.sdps.org.

Sincerely,

Bill Lehrman and Liz Goldstein, Co-editors
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)



Press Release


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Key Upcoming Date


Data collected for the HCAHPS survey must be submitted to the HCAHPS warehouse, via QualityNet Exchange, by or before the deadline posted on the HCAHPS website. It is imperative that data be submitted correctly by the deadline in order for hospitals to meet RHQDAPU requirements. Once the warehouse closes, data cannot be submitted or changed in any way. CMS strongly suggests that data be submitted at least 48 hours prior to the deadline, which should allow time for resubmission if there were an error in the original submission. Hospitals are strongly encouraged to promptly inspect their Data Submission Report and/or HCAHPS Feedback Reports to confirm their data was accepted into the data warehouse.



Summary of HCAHPS Results


Presented here for the first time is a summary of HCAHPS results for patients discharged between October 2006 and June 2007. This table contains the average score of participating hospitals in the most positive, or "top box", category for each of the ten publicly reported HCAHPS measures. For example, the column labeled "Comm. with Nurses" displays the percent of patients who reported that their nurses "always" communicated well. Also shown is the number of participating hospitals and the survey response rate for each state and the nation.

Full details about each HCAHPS measure, as well as information on survey administration, methodology, etc., can be found in the "Survey of Patients' Hospital Experiences" section of the Hospital Compare website (http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/Hospital)
To view and/or download the table please click here.