CAHPS Home and Community-Based Services Survey

The CAHPS Home and Community-Based Services Survey (HCBS CAHPS) is designed to assess the experiences of adult Medicaid beneficiaries who receive long-term services and support from State HCBS programs. These programs provide services for adults with disabilities, including frail elderly, people with physical disabilities, people with developmental or intellectual disabilities, people with acquired brain injury, and people with severe mental illness. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services developed this survey for voluntary use by State Medicaid programs, including both fee-for-service HCBS programs as well as managed long-term services and supports programs.

The CAHPS Home and Community-Based Services Survey must be administered in person or by telephone by an interviewer. It consists of 69 core items that ask beneficiaries to report on their experiences with the following:

• Getting needed services.
• Communication with providers.
• Case managers.
• Choice of services.
• Medical transportation.
• Personal safety.
• Community inclusion and empowerment.

A set of supplemental items ask about experience with employment services.

How to Get the CAHPS Home and Community-Based Services Survey and Administrative Guidance

To access this survey, supplemental items, and supporting documentation for survey administration, please visit CAHPS Home and Community Based Services Survey on Medicaid.gov. No documentation for this survey is available on AHRQ's website.

For technical assistance with this survey, contact: HCBS-CAHPS@cms.hhs.gov.

Aggregated Results for the Home and Community-Based Services Survey

State Medicaid agencies and the managed care entities with which they contract can submit the results of the HCBS Survey to AHRQ's CAHPS Databases. The CAHPS HCBS Survey Database aggregates the data from this survey and produces reports that facilitate comparisons of survey results by individual states and HCBS program types. Participation in this database is free and voluntary.

All participants receive a private, customized feedback report that compares their state and individual program type results to overall findings. The HCBS CAHPS Database also produces an Online Reporting System that allows users to view, download, and print custom reports of survey results and de-identified data available in research datasets for approved research purposes. As 2020 is the inaugural year for submission to this database, data for the Online Reporting System and research datasets will be dependent on the number of contributions.

Learn more about participating in the database for the HCBS Survey.