The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) is funding a 5-year project to help consumers identify the best health care plans and services for their needs. CAHPS® (Consumer Assessment of Health Plans) is an easy-to-use kit of survey and report tools that provides reliable and valid information to help consumers and purchasers assess and choose among health plans.
The CAHPS® version 2.0 questionnaires (select for Downloading Information) revise the earlier CAHPS® questionnaires, include Spanish versions, and also include a supplemental set of items that will be required for accreditation by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
In 1998, AHCPR and the CAHPS® Consortium updated and improved CAHPS® based on data from their demonstration sites, cognitive testing results and feedback from sponsors. In addition, AHCPR, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and the CAHPS® Consortium have recently completed a convergence of the CAHPS® survey and the NCQA Member Satisfaction Survey. The result of the convergence and the other revisions made by the CAHPS® team is a revised CAHPS® core and sets of supplemental items. The new core has been shortened to 46 items and retains many of the CAHPS® 1.0 items, as well as new items from the NCQA Member Satisfaction Survey.
In addition, the convergence process yielded a HEDIS (Health Plan Employer Data Information Set) supplemental set of items. NCQA will require health plans to use a new questionnaire comprised of the core and the HEDIS supplement for HEDIS 1999 reporting and NCQA accreditation. This new NCQA instrument is called CAHPS® 2.0H. The questionnaires will be referred to as CAHPS® 2.0H only if they are used for HEDIS 1999 and NCQA accreditation purposes. For more information about CAHPS® 2.0H and its protocol, call contact Kris Spector at NCQA, at (202) 955-3500.
All CAHPS® 2.0 Questionnaires can be downloaded from this Web document, are free of charge, and are in the public domain (select for Downloading Information).
The CAHPS® 2.0 Questionnaires are:
Table 1 describes the topic areas and the questions in each of the topic areas.
In addition, you may wish to combine the CAHPS® core questionnaires with CAHPS® supplemental items. The supplemental items allow you to measure quality in areas beyond those covered in the core questionnaire. These may include topics that you are interested in reporting about or that are of special interest to your audience. Though not exhaustive of all areas of health care consumer interest, these extra items include many of the most common issues associated with problems in getting good care. The special topics covered in the supplemental items are:
Clearly, not all of these extra sets of items are designed to be added to the CAHPS® core questionniare for all populations. Different plans may require different sets of questions. For example, plan A may offer dental services as a benefit, so you would want to add the dental questions, but only for the questionnaire going to plan A respondents.
Tables 2-4 describe how to develop your CAHPS® questionnaires by adding supplemental questions to the core questionnaires, and the cross-walk table includes placement instructions for each of the supplemental questions. The tables illustrate CAHPS® items that are strongly recommended ("Recomm.") or optional ("Option"). Core items are considered mandatory ("Mand.").
The CAHPS® 2.0 Medicaid (adult and child) and Medicare questionnaires already include the mandatory and recommended questions. You are free to add the optional questions to these questionnaires.
The placement instructions refer to either the CAHPS® 2.0 Adult Core Questionnaire or CAHPS® 2.0 Child Core Questionnaire. If you are, however, adding supplemental questions to the Medicaid or Medicare questionnaires, the cross-walk table can help you locate the corresponding question in the Medicaid or Medicare questionnaires.
CAHPS® questionnaire items are analyzed together within composites for reporting information to consumers. These reporting composites for the CAHPS® 2.0 questionnaires are shown in Table 5.
The CAHPS® questionnaire set also includes Spanish translations of the following:
The Spanish translations contain extra questions than appear in the English versions of the questionnaire. In order to capture the appropriate concept behind the "How much of a problem, if any" questions, the English question was split into two questions in Spanish: "Have you had a problem getting/receiving/finding, etc" followed by "Was it a big problem or a small problem."
The "How much of a problem, if any" questions have been numbered in the Spanish version to allow for an easy crosswalk to the English version. For example, Q6 which is a "How much of a problem, if any" question in the English version has been numbered as Q6, and Q6a in the Spanish version.
Select for the online version of the Technical Overview of CAHPS®. A print copy of the Technical Overview (AHCPR Pub. No. 97-R013) is available through the AHCPR Clearinghouse: 800-358-9295. You may also access the online version of the CAHPS® Fact Sheet.
If you wish to use the CAHPS® 2.0 Questionnaires or other products, you are strongly urged to contact the Survey User Network (at: 800-492-9261), register as a CAHPS® user, and inquire about technical assistance.
You may also contact:
Christine Crofton, Ph.D.
(301) 427-1323
Charles Darby, M.A.
(301) 427-1324
Center for Quality Measurement and Improvement
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research
Your browser may support downloading the CAHPS® questionnaires from this Web page. The files, which are in WordPerfect® 6.1 or Adobe® Portable Document Format, may be downloaded individually or as single self-extracting files of all English or all Spanish questionnaires. To download the files, right click on the links and then select "Save Target As" (Internet Explorer) or "Save Link As" (Netscape).
All CAHPS® 2.0 Questionnaires in Self-Extracting Files:
To open self-extracting files, download to empty folder on your hard drive. Use Windows® Explorer or File Manager to locate file and double click.
Select for information on accessing PDF Files.
Individual CAHPS® 2.0 Questionnaire Files:
Current as of December 1998
Internet Citation:
CAHPS® 2.0 Questionnaires. December 1998. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/cahps/cahpques.htm
Return to CAHPS®
Quality Assessment
AHRQ Home Page
Department of Health and Human Services