The Difference Between HCAHPS and the Patient Experience and its Implications for Physicians, Experience Leaders, and Health Executives

摘要

In October of 2006, the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) Survey as an “instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients’ perceptions of their hospital experience.”(1) HCAHPS introduced the health care system to the concept of the patient experience as we know it today, catalyzing monumental changes in a move toward making health care more patient-centered, as recommended by the Institute of Medicine (2). The patient experience is not new and did not begin with HCAHPS (3). However, our current conceptual and empirical understanding of the patient experience was standardized and codified by CMS through HCAHPS. Unfortunately, there are unintended consequences of this close association between HCAHPS and the patient experience. The difference between the 2 is often blurred, unappreciated, misunderstood, or ignored—to the detriment of both.