Summary of Focus Groups for CAHPS Dental Care Project.

摘要

Dental CAHPS (or D-CAHPS) is a small-scale effort to develop instruments to capture reports and ratings of consumers' dental care experiences. This research is led by Dr. Jim Crall in collaboration with RAND, and with initial support from the University of Connecticut. The D-CAHPS team's primary goal is to produce a parallel set of CAHPS instruments to be used to assess the dental care experiences of consumers. As with CAHPS, the instruments will contain Core items appropriate for a broad range of consumers and dental care delivery systems. The instruments will include supplemental items relevant to specific populations, insurance, or systems of care. Our initial item development efforts have focused on a publicly insured population: children who receive dental care via MediCal or the Healthy Families programs (California's Medicaid and SCHIP programs). This population was selected for two reasons. First, out of a general interest in the dental care experiences of children covered by Medicaid. Second, RAND's initial CAHPS development work focused on MediCal/AFDC populations. The current D-CAHPS effort allows RAND to draw from prior experience and expertise with this population. The purpose of this document is to report the key finding focus groups conducted as part of the D- CAHPS effort. The purpose of the focus groups was to affirm the current set of domains, and to determine if key aspects of care were missing from the domains or their associated items. The focus group participants engaged in a general discussion of dental care experiences to identify the factors that can contribute to positive and negative dental care encounters. This included a discussion of provider selection, access to specialist care, scheduling appointments, types of care, and the level of parental involvement or participation during individual visits for care. Following the general discussion, participants completed and discussed a draft item set.