Slide Presentation of the 2007 Annual Meeting of AHRQ

What Did We Ask Patients About Their Dialysis Care?

• Summary Measures
  • Nephrologists' Communication and Caring (7 items)
  • Quality of Dialysis Center Care and Operations (22 items)
    • Staff Communication and Caring
    • Staff Professionalism and Competence
    • Dialysis Center Operations
  • Providing Information to Patients (11 items)
• Ratings
  • Nephrologists
  • Staff
  • Center

Notes:

We included a lot of questions about aspects that are important to patients and obtained input from those most familiar with dialysis care. As you can see the survey covers many important areas.

However, I do want to point out that the CAHPS survey MAY not cover all the aspects that you expected to change or observed change in. For example, in some centers the QI activities resulted in better relationships and communication among staff and this is not something we ask about in the CAHPS survey since we are focusing on what patients know best. So, the CAHPS survey results most likely provide information on some key aspects related to your QI project but they do not provide all the information you need.