HCAHPS Survey

HCAHPS Background The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey is the first national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patients' perspectives of hospital care (CMS, 2014). In 2002, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) collaborated with CMS to develop and test the HCAHPS survey (CMS, 2014). Before testing began, the AHRQ initiated a long research process that included a public call for measures; review of literature; cognitive interviews; consumer focus groups; stakeholder input; a three-state pilot test; extensive psychometric analyses; consumer testing; and numerous small-scale field tests (CMS, 2014). The HCAHPS is a survey instrument and data collection methodology for

According to the data, there is one are that the emergency department is under the state and national average which is the average time patients spent in the emergency department before being seen by a healthcare professional which was 15 minutes; however, the state average was 18 minutes and the national average was 21 minutes.

This information presented is very good because many patients spend hours waiting to speak directly with a healthcare professional. According to ABC news (2010), patients who spent six or more hours in the emergency department but reported very good communication about delays gave a high satisfaction score. Patients who were in and out of the emergency department in less than an hour but reported poor communication about delays reported a low satisfaction score (ABC news, 2010).

The data indicated three sections that need improvement because the time duration is much higher than the state and national average. For instance, the time patients spent in the ED before being admitted to the hospital as an inpatient, the time patient spent after the doctor decided to admit them as an inpatient, and time spent in the ED before leaving from the