FieldsHealthcareResearch AN APPROVED H-CAHPS® VENDOR

FieldsHealthcareResearch can ensure your hospital meets the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requirements for patient experience surveying, thereby avoiding a penalty on your CMS reimbursements.

Why FieldsHealthcareResearch

Our process and price are simple and straightforward. We are a family owned and operated business. We are one of the longest standing data collection firms in the United States with over 40 years of conducting surveys. We specialize in data collection - we don't have the added expense of extra layers of personnel that the 'full service' consulting companies have, requiring them to pass on additional overhead costs, even to clients who simply want to comply with the CMS requirement.

FieldsHealthcareResearch offers a simple flat fee per month with a small one-time setup fee. There are no 'cost per survey' or 'cost per patient' charges that many vendors charge in addition to large initial contract fees. You don't have to 'trade-up' or choose a more expensive 'package' to see your data in a useful way - we provide free on-line and off-line viewing.

We are currently helping over 600 agencies comply with CAHPS® Survey requirements – let us help you.

Why Phone Mode

FieldsHealthcareResearch will utilize telephone only mode. Telephone generally produces a higher response rate than mail only, and is more cost effective than a mixed methodology. Telephone provides more complete and reliable data, as it is automated by computer but administered by well-trained telephone research interviewers, resulting in no skipped questions and fewer 'don't know' responses. It is our opinion that disgruntled patients will fill out a mail survey at a higher rate than content ones.

We provide bi-lingual interviewers at no additional cost to handle calls to your Spanish-speaking patients.

Comments

Dashboard

Statistics

Tabulation

Our Commitment and Technology

FieldsHealthcareResearch guarantees total compliance with all data collection and reporting requirements necessary for the H-CAHPS® surveys and submissions. In addition, we provide free on-line and off-line reporting.

For more information, please call Ken Fields at (513) 821-6266 or email Ken@FieldsHealthcareResearch.com.

For direct Email communications with CMS regarding the Hospital-CAHPS® survey: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

H-CAHPS® and CMS Requirements

H-CAHPS® has been linked to the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (Hospital VBP) Program that adjusts hospitals’ payments based on quality of care. The Hospital VBP Program assesses hospital performance in three domains: Clinical Process of Care, Patient Experience of Care, and Outcome. The Patient Experience of Care Domain is based on the H-CAHPS® Survey.

All hospitals eligible for the APU and receiving reimbursement via the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) are required to participate in H-CAHPS® to avoid reduced reimbursement. Non-IPPS hospitals can participate in H-CAHPS® voluntarily.

Medicare’s Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems (IPPS) final rule for fiscal year 2019, including all quality reporting requirements, may be viewed in the Federal Register here.

Survey Overview

The Hospital CAHPS® (H-CAHPS) Survey is used to publicly report patients' perspectives of hospital performance. According to CMS, the three goals of the H-CAHPS® survey are to improve quality of care, enhance public accountability, and produce standardized data to allow for meaningful comparisons between hospitals¹.

The survey produces 11 quality reporting measures of patient experience encompassing:

• Nurse Communication
• Doctor Communication
• Communication About Medicines
• Timely Help from Hospital Staff
• Information About Discharge
• Pain Management
• Care Transition
• Cleanliness of Hospital Environment
• Quietness of Hospital Environment
• Patients' Rating of Hospital
• Would Recommend Hospital

Patients considered eligible for inclusion in the HCAHPS Survey:

• Medicare/ Medicaid patients
• Patients served in all branches that fall under your CCN number
• 18 years or older at the time of admission
• At least one overnight stay in the hospital as an inpatient
• Non-psychiatric Ms-DRG/principal diagnosis at discharge
• Alive at the time of discharge

There are several categories of otherwise eligible patients who are excluded from the survey for logistical reasons. These include patients discharged to hospice care, nursing homes, and skilled nursing facilities; court/law enforcement patients (i.e. prisoners); and patients with a foreign home address.

¹http://www.hcahpsonline.org.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Baltimore, MD. Accessed July 2, 2014.

H-CAHPS® Star Ratings

CMS added H-CAHPS® Star Ratings to the Hospital Compare website in April 2015 to visually summarize H-CAHPS® Survey results. These ratings are designed to help consumers more easily compare hospitals; they are not used for the Hospital VBP payment determination.

There are twelve H-CAHPS® Star Ratings: one for each of the 11 publicly reported H-CAHPS® measures (see “Survey Overview” above) and one Summary Star Rating that combines these 11 Star Ratings.

CMS updates the H-CAHPS® Star Ratings quarterly. Hospitals must have completed at least 100 H-CAHPS® surveys over a given year to receive H-CAHPS® Star Ratings.

For an in-depth explanation of how CMS converts survey responses into Star Ratings, see the most recent Technical Notes for H-CAHPS® Star Ratings here.