Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Health Plan Survey, Version 5.0 (Medicaid and Commercial)

The CAHPS Health Plan Survey is a survey that asks health plan enrollees to report about their care and health plan experiences as well as the quality of care received from physicians. HP-CAHPS Version 4.0 was endorsed by NQF in July 2007 (NQF #0006) and Version 5.0 received maintenance endorsement in January 2015. The survey is part of the CAHPS family of patient experience surveys and is available in the public domain at https://www.ahrq.gov/cahps/surveys-guidance/hp/index.html

The survey is designed to be administered to includes individuals (18 and older for the Adult version; parents or guardians of children aged 0-17 for the Child version) who have been enrolled in a health plan for a specified period (6 months or longer for Medicaid version, 12 months or longer for Commercial version) with no more than one 30-day break in enrollment.

The CAHPS Adult Health Plan Survey has 39 items, and the CAHPS Child Health Plan Survey has 41 items. Ten of the adult survey items and 11 of the child survey items are used to form 4 composite measures. Each survey also has 4 single-item rating measures. The aspect of quality assessed by each measure is described below:

Measure 1: Getting Needed Care (2 items)
Measure 2: Getting Care Quickly (2 items)
Measure 3: How Well Doctors Communicate (4 items in Adult survey & 5 items in Child survey)
Measure 4: Health Plan Information and Customer Service (2 items)
Measure 5: How People Rated Their Personal Doctor (1 item)
Measure 6: How People Rated Their Specialist (1 item)
Measure 7: How People Rated Their Health Care (1 item)
Measure 8: How People Rated Their Health Plan (1 item)