The HHCAHPS survey, also known as CAHPS Home Health Care Survey, or Home Health Care CAHPS, is a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients' perspectives of home health care.

HHCAHPS is designed to measure the experiences of people receiving home health care from Medicare-certified home health care agencies. The survey is designed to meet the following three broad goals.

• It will produce comparable data on the patient’s perspective that will allow objective and meaningful comparisons between home health agencies on domains that are important to consumers.
• Public reporting of survey results is designed to create incentives for agencies to improve their quality of care.
• Public reporting will serve to enhance public accountability in health care by increasing the transparency of the quality of care provided in return for public investment.

By collecting Home Health Care CAHPS Survey data, home health agencies will gain a perspective on how their patients view the quality of care received.

Home health agencies that participate in the national implementation will need to contract with an approved survey vendor to conduct the Home Health Care CAHPS Survey.

Home health agencies may voluntarily participate in the National Implementation of the Home Health Care CAHPS Survey starting October 2009 by contracting with an approved survey vendor.

HHCAHPS can be viewed as a core set of questions that can be combined with a customized set of agency-specific items. HHCAHPS is meant to complement the data agencies currently collect to support improvements in internal customer services and quality related activities.

• The survey will be administered to a random sample of live discharges who are 18 or older, had at least one skilled home health visit, and have received at least two visits from HHA personnel during a 2-month lookback period
• Patients will be surveyed throughout each month and data submitted to CMS on a monthly or quarterly basis
• Home Health Agencies may preview their HHCAHPS results prior to public reporting

CFRI has been assigned as an approved vendor to conduct HHCAHPS surveys.