CAHPS® and HCAHPS® surveys for healthcare quality improvement

Is your healthcare, dental, or insurance organization delivering the care your patients actually experience as excellent? How do you know? And how do you turn that feedback into measurable improvement?

The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) program is a standardized way to capture and compare patient experience across plans, providers, and facilities. Created by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and used by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for public reporting, CAHPS surveys help benchmark satisfaction and quality nationwide.

The Hospital CAHPS (HCAHPS®) survey uses the same framework for inpatient care, providing hospitals with consistent measures for communication, responsiveness, and overall experience. Comparing your HCAHPS results with national data shows exactly where to focus improvement efforts.

This guide breaks CAHPS down into clear, practical steps. You’ll learn what each survey measures, how HCAHPS fits into the regulatory picture, and how to turn patient feedback into faster, more focused improvement.

CAHPS® (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) surveys are a standardized tool to measure patient experience across outpatient and inpatient settings. Developed and overseen by AHRQ’s CAHPS Consortium, these surveys ask patients or enrollees to evaluate their experiences with health plans, clinicians, and healthcare facilities using measures they identify as meaningful, such as communication, access, and care coordination.

Each CAHPS® survey uses standardized, validated questions that ask patients to rate specific aspects of their experience: communication with providers, access to care, coordination, and other domains that matter most to them.

Depending on the instrument, CAHPS can be fielded by health plans, provider organizations, or facilities and used by federal and state agencies for public reporting, oversight, and quality improvement. For example, CMS implements HCAHPS (the hospital instrument) for public reporting and value-based purchasing; other CAHPS surveys inform plan quality programs and databases managed by AHRQ.

A consistent, validated way to hear the patient’s voice lets you compare performance over time and against peers—and link improvements to outcomes that shoppers and regulators can see. SurveyMonkey makes the operational side—design, sending, and analysis—straightforward, so your team can focus on decisions.

HCAHPS is the national, standardized survey of adult inpatient hospital experience. Scores are used for public reporting on Medicare’s Care Compare and are incorporated into payment programs, so accuracy and timeliness matter. CMS maintains the survey, technical specs, and approved vendor list; AHRQ points hospital users to the CMS hub.

To stay current on official program details, start at the CMS HCAHPS page for design, modes, vendor information, and updates. For modernization details—including the Updated HCAHPS Survey effective for discharges January 1, 2025 forward—see HCAHPS Online.

Treat HCAHPS as your standardized benchmark, then rely on SurveyMonkey to run real-time pulse checks (e.g., post-discharge or unit-level) to test fixes before the next reporting cycle. This strategy ensures your patients’ voices are heard and utilized to make better decisions in the long run.

Below are five expert-certified CAHPS® templates you can preview and adapt. Use them to practice setup, test workflows, or complement your formal CAHPS program with additional, non-program feedback. Each template includes pre-built CAHPS® survey questions that follow AHRQ’s design standards, so you can field credible patient-experience measures without rewriting items from scratch.

Our intuitive setup, backed by CAHPS research standards, helps you collect and compare high-quality feedback quickly. Use one of our CAHPS online templates to survey your patients or clients, and then benchmark your practice or plan.

If you’re not sure which survey fits your setting, use this quick reference as a guide. Every instrument below was developed or approved by the CAHPS Consortium under AHRQ leadership and, where noted, administered by CMS. Each survey includes its own set of standardized CAHPS® survey questions tailored to the care setting it measures.

Regular patient feedback, combined with the feedback collected from other providers in your region, gives you a powerful way to benchmark care quality and customer service over time. Field surveys in ways that encourage participation and build trust to ensure the data you collect is both reliable and comparable.

HCAHPS® results are published for consumers on Medicare Care Compare and incorporated into Medicare payment programs. For plan instruments, AHRQ maintains CAHPS databases that accept submissions and generate comparative reports. Use these benchmarks to set clear targets and identify gaps your local teams can close through quality improvement efforts.

Here is a simple framework for improving CAHPS® results:

SurveyMonkey makes improvement easier. Use automated reminders, role-based data access, and built-in filters and trend charts to see changes quickly and keep QI teams moving faster between survey cycles.

Still sorting out the details? These quick answers clear up common questions about CAHPS, HCAHPS, and where to find official survey information.

SurveyMonkey is designed to help you collect protected health information securely while keeping workflows simple and compliant. Organizations regulated by HIPAA can use SurveyMonkey to gather health and well-being data under a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).

With enterprise features, you can limit access by role, restrict exports with governance controls, and avoid capturing unnecessary identifiers in free-text fields—so you protect privacy and maintain compliance without extra complexity.

You can find templates, privacy help-center articles, and a contact path for enterprise reviews in the SurveyMonkey Trust Center and product pages.

CAHPS® and HCAHPS® surveys turn patient feedback into clear, comparable insights you can use to raise quality and satisfaction. With SurveyMonkey, you can start fast, stay compliant, and keep every response secure.

Preview a CAHPS® template to explore ready-made question sets, set up your collectors and roles, and start capturing reliable patient experience data right away.

Get started free to launch your survey today, or visit the SurveyMonkey Trust Center for HIPAA-enabled enterprise options that make quality improvement and compliance effortless.