What is HCAHPS, and what does it stand for?
HCAHPS (also known as Hospital CAHPS) stands for Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems and is a standardized survey of hospital patients that will capture patients’ unique perspectives on hospital care for the purpose of providing the public with comparable information on hospital quality. HCAHPS consists of a standardized survey instrument and a set of data collection and reporting procedures. These will be used by hospitals (or their survey vendors) to gather information about patients’ perspectives on care in hospital. The core set of HCAHPS questions can either be added to a hospitals current patient survey, or used as a stand-alone instrument. HCAHPS is part of a public/private partnership dedicated to publicly reporting valid and comparable information on hospital care quality. This information will serve the goal of increasing consumers knowledge of hospital care. It will also provide hospitals with data and benchmarks to gauge their performance relati
