CAHPS Patient Experience Surveys and Guidance

What Are CAHPS Surveys?

CAHPS surveys ask patients to report on their experiences with a range of healthcare services at multiple levels of the delivery system. Some CAHPS surveys ask about patients' experiences with healthcare providers, such as doctors, clinics, and hospice teams, or with care for specific health conditions. Other surveys ask enrollees about their experiences with health plans and related programs. Finally, several surveys ask about experiences with care delivered in facilities, including hospitals, dialysis centers, and hospital outpatient surgery departments and ambulatory surgery centers.

For each survey, you can download formatted survey instruments, guidance for administering them, and information on analyzing and using the results. Information in the guidance documents is based on the survey developers' extensive research into best practices in survey design and administration as well as analyses of data collected during the field testing of each instrument. AHRQ does not require the use of any surveys or the use of a specific methodology for sampling or survey administration.

Some CAHPS surveys are administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of their public reporting or reimbursement programs. For these surveys, please consult technical documentation from CMS for their survey administration requirements; information on where to find those requirements is provided for the relevant surveys.

Reasons To Choose a CAHPS Survey (1:05)

*Surveys administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

New to CAHPS surveys? Watch this video for an overview.

Understanding CAHPS Surveys: A Primer for New Users (Webcast) (January 11, 2023)

Understanding CAHPS® Surveys: A Primer for New Users (1:01:29)