About CAHPS
Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) is an AHRQ program that began in 1995. Its purpose is to advance our scientific understanding of patient experience with healthcare. The acronym "CAHPS" is a registered trademark of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Reasons To Choose a CAHPS Survey (1:05)
What Is Patient Experience?
Patient experience encompasses the range of interactions that patients have with the healthcare system, including their care from health plans, and from doctors, nurses, and staff in hospitals, physician practices, and other healthcare facilities. The terms patient satisfaction and patient experience are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.
What Does the CAHPS Program Do?
Under the CAHPS program, AHRQ funds, oversees, and works closely with a consortium of research organizations to conduct research on patient experience and develop surveys that ask consumers and patients to report on and evaluate their experiences with health plans, providers, and healthcare facilities. The CAHPS program also investigates and shares strategies for improving the reliability and validity of survey results, reporting survey results to interested audiences, and using the results to improve patients' experiences with care.
Read AHRQ's program brief: CAHPS: Assessing Health Care Quality From the Patient's Perspective (PDF, 560 KB)
The CAHPS surveys cover topics that are important to consumers and focus on aspects of quality that consumers are best qualified to assess, such as the communication skills of providers and ease of access to healthcare services. All CAHPS surveys and related documentation are free to anyone who wants to use these surveys to assess patients' experiences with care.
Users of CAHPS survey results include patients and consumers, healthcare professionals, public and private purchasers of healthcare, healthcare accreditation organizations, health plans, and regional improvement collaboratives. These individuals and organizations use the survey results to evaluate and compare healthcare providers and to improve patient experience with healthcare services.
Understanding CAHPS Surveys (PDF, 117 KB)
Where Can I Find More Information About the CAHPS Program and Surveys?
Principles underlying CAHPS surveys—A set of design principles govern and guide the development of CAHPS surveys and related tools.
Using the CAHPS name—Guidelines for using the trademarked CAHPS name when referring to the program and its many products support appropriate and consistent use of the CAHPS trademark.
FAQs—Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) offers answers to dozens of questions about the CAHPS program and its surveys.
Bibliography—The searchable CAHPS bibliography lists numerous articles about the development of CAHPS surveys and their use as a tool for assessing patients' experiences with care.
Glossary—The CAHPS glossary explains terminology that is frequently used in documentation about CAHPS surveys.
CAHPS User Network—AHRQ's CAHPS User Network is responsible for making the survey products available and providing free technical assistance and education. The User Network also manages the CAHPS Databases, which are repositories for aggregated data from select CAHPS surveys.
Contact information—Contact CAHPS with questions or comments about the CAHPS surveys or the CAHPS Database.
