title: Possibilities for Shortening the CAHPS Clinician and Group Survey.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Clinician and Group adult survey (CG-CAHPS) includes 34 items used to monitor the quality of ambulatory care from the patient's perspective. CG-CAHPS includes items assessing access to care, provider communication, and courtesy and respect of office staff. Stakeholders have expressed concerns about the length of the CG-CAHPS survey.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This paper explores the impact on reliability and validity of the CAHPS domain scores of reducing the numbers of items used to assess the 3 core CG-CAHPS domains (Provider Communication, Access to Care, and Courteous and Helpful Office Staff).
  
  
  METHODS
  CG-CAHPS data reported here consist of 136,725 patients across 4 datasets including ambulatory clinics, patient-centered medical homes, and Accountable Care Organizations. Analyses are conducted in parallel across the 4 settings to allow evaluations across data source.
  
  
  METHODS
  Multiple regression and ANOVA techniques were used to evaluate reliability for shorter sets of items. Site-level correlations with the overall rating of the provider were compared to evaluate the impact on validity. The change in practices' rank-ordering as a function of domain revision is also reported.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Findings suggest that the Provider Communication (6 items) and Access (5 items) domains can be reduced to as few as 2 items each and Office Staff (2 items) can be reduced to a single item without a substantial loss in reliability or content.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The performance of several of the reduced-length options for CG-CAHPS domains closely matches the full versions and may be useful in health care settings where the full-length survey is impractical due to time or cost constraints.
authors.affiliation: *RAND Corporation, Santa Monica†Department of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: Brian D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Stucky
authors.forename: Ron D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Hays
authors.forename: Maria O
authors.initials: MO
authors.lastname: Edelen
authors.forename: Jill
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gurvey
authors.forename: Julie A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000592:standards*; D003151:Community Health Centers / Q000592:standards; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000592:standards*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D055815:Young Adult