CAHPS Webcasts & Other Events

Recent Webcasts

The CAHPS^® User Network hosts educational events designed to inform survey users about products and related resources, offer updates on the status of products in development, and support in the use of CAHPS survey and data results.

2022

• The Power of Patient Stories for Improving the Patient Experience (Webcast) (May 12, 2022)
• Introducing the CAHPS Child Hospital Survey (Child HCAHPS) Database (Webcast) (March 23, 2022)
• Understanding CAHPS Surveys: A Primer for New Users (Webcast) (January 19, 2022)

2021

• CAHPS Patient Narrative Item Sets (November 16, 2021) 
• Participating in the 2021 CAHPS Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS CAHPS) Survey Database: What You Need To Know (AHRQ-CMS webcast) (April 21, 2021)
• Improving Patient Experience in Large Organizations (March 24, 2021)
• Improving Patient Experience: Data Analysis Methods (March 3, 2021)
• Lessons From Healthcare Organizations on Improving Patient Experience (January 28, 2021)

2020

• Introducing the CAHPS Clinician & Group Visit Survey 4.0 (beta) (December 17, 2020)
• AHRQ Webcast on Updated CAHPS Analysis Program (November 19, 2020) 
• Introducing the CAHPS Emergency Department Survey (ED CAHPS) (October 6, 2020)
• Understanding CAHPS Surveys: A Primer for New Users (January 22, 2020)

2019

• Recent Insights into CAHPS Survey Modes and Response Rates (November 19, 2019)
• Developing Invitation Messages That Increase CAHPS Survey Response Rates (September 10, 2019)
• Creative Strategies to Improve Patient Care Experience (April 18, 2019)

Review all webcasts since 2013.

Research Meetings

AHRQ occasionally hosts research meetings that bring together researchers, subject matter experts and key stakeholders to focus on specific topics of interest related to CAHPS surveys.

Advancing the Science and Implementation of Patient Narratives (October 2021)

In this invitation-only, virtual research meeting, CAHPS researchers, field test partners, and others gathered online to discuss the current and potential uses of patient narratives and the development of open-ended survey items designed to elicit balanced, complete, and actionable narratives in different care settings. This meeting explored the following four questions:

1. How can narratives be analyzed, reported and used for maximum impact in quality improvement initiatives?
2. What are the challenges and opportunities for using patient narratives in public reports?
3. What do narratives reveal about patients’ experiences that complement CAHPS survey results? How can narrative questions be successfully implemented in real-world settings?
4. What are the potential benefits and challenges of using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other machine learning methods for analyzing narratives? What are the advantages of NLP methods over human qualitative coding approaches? How can the two approaches be combined for optimal effect?

Read a summary of presentations and discussions that took place at the October 2021 research meeting on patient narratives (PDF, 417 KB).

Advancing Methods of Implementing and Evaluating Patient Experience Improvement Using CAHPS® Surveys (October 2020)

This invitational research meeting brought together CAHPS research and survey users virtually to explore three major topics:

• What we know from prior research about the organizational factors and environment needed to improve patient experience.
• How organizations in different health care settings are using CAHPS survey results, other data, and targeted strategies to improve specific aspects of patients’ experience.
• What evaluations of improvement initiatives using CAHPS data can teach us about what it takes to improve patient experience.

The speakers and participants in this meeting represented a variety of health care organizations, including physician groups, hospitals, health plans, dialysis facilities, and hospices.

To learn more, read a summary of the presentations at the October 2020 research meeting on patient experience improvement methods.

Advances in Survey Methodology: Maximizing Response Rates and the Representativeness of CAHPS^® Survey Data (September 2018)

This research meeting focused on two related topics:

• Improving response rates for CAHPS surveys.
• Ensuring the representativeness of respondents to CAHPS surveys.

The speakers and participants included members of the CAHPS Consortium, other researchers working with CAHPS surveys, experts in survey methodology, representatives of Federal agencies that use CAHPS surveys, experts in patient-centered care, and other stakeholders such as health plans, health systems, and accrediting organizations.

The presentations and discussion focused on three issues that point to priorities for future research:

• The promise and challenges of various survey modes.
• Strategies for encouraging survey responses.
• The potential impact of changes to survey length, design, and format.

To learn more, read a summary of the September 2018 research meeting on survey methodology (PDF, 442 KB).

Advancing the Science and Implementation of Patient Narrative Elicitation and Reporting (September 2016)

The purpose of this research meeting was to identify the key methodological, operational, and policy issues that would need to be addressed to advance the evidence-based use of patient narrative information as a complement to CAHPS survey scores. In additional to CAHPS researchers, participants included representatives of health systems, health plans, patient advocacy groups, regional quality improvement coalitions, research organizations, and foundations.

Following presentations by the CAHPS team about the findings from experimental research and early field tests, the participants discussed a variety of challenges and issues related to:

• Eliciting representative narratives from patients.
• Analyzing the narratives to identify actionable information.
• Reporting the narratives to health care providers and to the public.
• Using narratives to inform quality improvement processes.

Topics identified for future research included the following:

• Developing elicitation protocols for other health care settings.
• Testing alternative narrative invitations/framing language.
• Improving the efficiency of data collection modes.
• Strategies for taking analysis of narratives to scale (e.g., natural language processing (NLP).
• Assessing alternative feedback methods for clinicians.
• Exploring regulatory/legal issues related to public reporting of narratives.

To learn more, read a summary of the September 2016 research meeting on patient narratives.