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Reporting CAHPS Survey Results

Users of CAHPS surveys may report the results of the survey publicly to inform healthcare consumers and/or privately to inform healthcare providers and other stakeholders and support their efforts to improve patients’ experiences with care. While the basic content included in these reports may be the same, the specific content should differ because the purposes differ.

Public Reporting 

In reports intended for consumers, the goal is to provide information that people can use to assess and compare the performance of providers and identify those that best meet their needs. Survey results are typically reported along with other measures of quality and safety. For that reason, the presentation of measures and scores must be concise and easily digestible. The use of composite measures rather than individual items is one way to avoid “information overload” among consumers. 

Another strategy is to limit the number of patient experience measures in a report; all measures from a core survey are recommended for consumer reports, but the use of measures from supplemental items should be carefully considered. Report sponsors have to weigh the trade-off between offering an array of performance scores and overwhelming consumers with more information than they can process. 

Learn more about the CAHPS Consortium’s research on reporting information to consumers. This research was intended to contribute to the science of public reporting and support the effective reporting of CAHPS survey measures and patient narratives to consumers, clinicians, and other audiences. 

Private Reporting 

A report intended for providers and other internal audiences must also be clear and concise but can and should contain more information in order to support use of the results to identify relative strengths and weaknesses. Options include: 

• Greater level of detail, such as results at the item level, results for any supplemental items, and the full range of survey responses (e.g., the percent that gave each possible response).
• Different kinds of comparators, such as local or State averages and percentiles.
• Trend data (when available).

Moreover, these reports can include measures from the supplemental item sets that did not achieve a high enough level of reliability at the suggested sample sizes to be recommended for public reporting. A high level of reliability is not necessary for a measure to provide useful information for quality improvement. With this information, providers are equipped to analyze their performance and take steps towards improving their patients’ experiences.

Learn more about using CAHPS survey results to improve patients' experiences. 

Related resource: The CAHPS Ambulatory Care Improvement Guide

CAHPS Measures of Patient Experiences

Each CAHPS survey produces measures of patient experience that can be reported to consumers and healthcare providers.

Reporting Guidelines and Strategies

Survey users can consult guidelines for reporting CAHPS survey results based on consumer testing conducted by the CAHPS Consortium, the experiences of CAHPS researchers and sponsors, and published literature on related topics.

For more comprehensive guidance on developing, designing, promoting, and evaluating healthcare quality reports for consumers, visit AHRQ’s TalkingQuality.

Examples of Comparative Reports

Illustrative examples of web-based comparative reports for consumers on the quality and costs of healthcare from health plans are available in AHRQ's TalkingQuality: Profiles of Comparative Reports on Health Care Quality and Costs. Organizations that are developing comparative reports can use these examples to better understand the variety of content and data presentation strategies.