| dc.description.abstract | The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandates that all US hospitals administer a patient satisfaction survey (the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, or HCAHPS) to a sampling of discharged hospitalized patients. A large, integrated health system operating over 140 hospitals in the US with annual revenue of more than $27 billion recently changed the modality of its HCAHPS administration from phone (by voice, human to human) to mail (on paper), and wants to understand the impact of doing so. This project explored the effect of changing from phone to mail survey administration on response rates, survey ratings, and reputational risk, as well as the potential financial implications of the change. Results indicate that surveys conducted by mail have lower response rates and significantly lower ratings, and the profile of respondents is significantly different for all demographic variables collected by HCAHPS when collected by phone vs. by mail. In some cases there was an interaction found between demographic profile and survey mode (phone vs. mail) on survey ratings provided. Results also indicated that the current CMS mode adjustments are not sufficient to account for the differences found in this organization’s HCAHPS results when collected by phone vs. by mail. | |
