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.

• Lessons From Healthcare Organizations on Improving Patient Experience (January 28, 2021)
• 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)
• 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 to the CAHPS Consortium.

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.

Archived Meeting Materials

Presentations at AHRQ Conferences: 2010–2015

CAHPS researchers have shared their work at the AHRQ annual conferences. Select the links below to review their presentations.

• 2015 AHRQ Research Conference, October 4–6, 2015
• 2012 AHRQ Annual Conference, September 9–11, 2012
• 2011 AHRQ Annual Conference, September 18–21, 2011
• 2010 AHRQ Annual Conference, September 27–29, 2010

User Group Meetings: 2001–2010

AHRQ hosted 12 in-person conferences for researchers and users of CAHPS surveys. Select the links below to review the presentations delivered at these meetings.

• 12th National CAHPS User Group Meeting, April 19–21, 2010
• 11th National CAHPS User Group Meeting, December 3–5, 2008
• 10th National CAHPS User Group Meeting, March 29–31, 2006
• 9th National CAHPS User Group Meeting, December 2004
• 8th National CAHPS User Group Meeting, June 6–7, 2002
• 7th National CAHPS User Group Meeting, March 8–9, 2001