June 3 -- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) invites comments by August 2, 2022 regarding the proposed information collection project “Child Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (Child HCAHPS) Survey Database.”
The Child Hospital CAHPS Survey (Child HCAHPS) assesses the experiences of pediatric patients (less than 18 years old) and their parents or guardians with inpatient care. It complements the Adult Hospital CAHPS Survey (Adult HCAHPS), which asks adult inpatients about their experiences. The Child HCAHPS Database is a voluntary database available to all Child HCAHPS users to support both quality improvement and research to enhance the patient-centeredness of care delivered to pediatric hospital patients.
Like the survey instrument itself and related toolkit materials to support survey implementation, aggregated Child HCAHPS Database results are made publicly available on AHRQ's CAHPS website. Technical assistance is provided by AHRQ through its contractor at no charge to hospitals to facilitate the access and use of these materials for quality improvement and research. Technical assistance is also provided to support Child HCAHPS data submission.
The Child HCAHPS Database supports AHRQ's goals of promoting improvements in the quality and patient-centeredness of health care in pediatric hospital settings. This research has the following goals:
1. Improve care provided by individual hospitals and hospital systems.
2. Offer several products and services, including providing survey results presented through an Online Reporting System, summary chartbooks, custom analyses, private reports and data for research purposes.
3. Provides information to help identify strengths and areas with potential for improvement in patient care.
Survey data from the Child HCAHPS Database will be used to produce three types of reporting products:
• Hospital Feedback Reports. Hospitals that submit data will have access to a customized report that presents findings for their individual submission along with results from the database overall. These “private” hospital feedback reports will display sortable results for each of the Child HCAHPS core composite measures and for each individual survey item that forms the composite measure.
• Child HCAHPS Chartbook. A summary-level Chartbook will be compiled to display top box and other proportional scores for the Child HCAHPS items and composite measures broken out by selected hospital characteristics (e.g., region, hospital size, ownership and affiliation, etc.).
• AHRQ Data Tools website. Aggregate results also will be made publicly available through an interactive, web-based system that allows users to view survey items and composite results in a variety of formats.
This study is being conducted by AHRQ through its contractor, Westat, pursuant to AHRQ's statutory authority to conduct and support research on health care and on systems for the delivery of such care, including activities with respect to: the quality, effectiveness, efficiency, appropriateness and value of healthcare services; quality measurement and improvement; and health surveys and database development. 42 U.S.C. 299a(a)(1), (2), and (8).
To achieve the goals of this project, the following activities and data collections that constitute information collection under the Paperwork Reduction Act will be implemented:
Registration with the submission website to obtain an account with a secure username and password. The point-of-contact (POC), often the hospital, completes a number of data submission steps and forms, beginning with the completion of the online registration form. The purpose of this form is to collect basic contact information about the organization and initiate the registration process;
Submission of signed Data Use Agreements (DUAs) and survey questionnaires. The purpose of the data use agreement, completed by the participating hospital, is to state how data submitted by or on behalf of hospitals will be used and provides confidentiality assurances;
Submission of hospital information form. The purpose of this form completed by the participating organization, is to collect background characteristics of the hospital; and
Follow-up with submitters in the event of a rejected file, to assist in making corrections and resubmitting the file.
Child HCAHPS website:
https://www.ahrq.gov/cahps/surveys-guidance/hospital/about/child_hp_survey.html
Draft Child HCAHPS Survey Database materials:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b0f6poyrqu2r1p6/AAB47K7mFo7yEvo22we4xOq3a?dl=0
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2022-11883