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For more than two decades, AHRQ's CAHPS Consortium has served as the "R&D engine" for the CAHPS initiative, which has been responsible for multiple innovations in the design and administration of patient experience surveys. This research team continues to convene stakeholders and explore ways to improve the usefulness and practicality of the surveys. The projects proposed by the CAHPS Consortium in CAHPS VI are outlined below.

Development of New Surveys and Supplemental Item Sets

There are new surveys and item sets in development regarding:

• Maternal care.
• Inpatient mental health care.
• Perceptions of bias in ambulatory care settings.
• Items targeted at patients with functional, visual and hearing impairments.

Updates to Existing Survey and Item Sets

Proposed changes to existing surveys and item sets include:

• Adding/revising questions about sexual identity and disability in the “About you” questions at the end of the survey.
• Updating the Health Plan Survey and the Clinician & Group Survey.

Survey Methods Research

Survey methods research includes studies to evaluate different ways of collecting data that increase response rates and improve data quality. Studies will also assess the effectiveness of various modes of data collection for patients with functional, visual, and hearing impairments.

Improving Patient Experience

Proposed research studies focus on the following:

• Improving patient engagement and shared decision-making in ambulatory care settings.
• Evaluating and improving patient-provider interactions in ambulatory care settings, especially for Spanish-preferring patients and those with provider-patient language discordance.
• Monitoring and improving inpatient pediatric doctor communication, especially for Spanish-preferring patients and their families.
• Understanding how hospital patient safety culture, employee engagement, and employee burnout relate to patient care experience.
• Assessing and improving the emotional experience of patient care in the hospital setting.
• Updating the CAHPS Ambulatory Care Improvement Guide.

Patient Narrative Analysis and Reporting

Proposed research studies focus on the following:

• Investigating patient narrative responses by race, ethnicity, language preference, and sex.
• Analyzing bias in off-the-shelf natural language programs used for coding narrative data.
• Developing and testing ways to report patient narrative data with survey data.

For more information regarding CAHPS VI work, please contact CAHPS1@westat.com.