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Objective: To estimate the effect of survey mode (mail versus telephone) on reports and ratings of hospital care.Data Sources/study Setting: The total sample included 20,826 patients discharged from a group of 24 distinct hospitals in three states (Arizona, Maryland, New York). We collected CAHPS data in 2003 by mail and telephone from 9,504 patients, of whom 39 percent responded by telephone and 61 percent by mail.Study Design: We estimated mode effects in an observational design, using both propensity score blocking and (ordered) logistic regression on covariates. We used variables derived from administrative data (either included as covariates in the regression function or used in estimating the propensity score) grouped in three categories: individual characteristics, characteristics of the stay and hospital, and survey administration variables.Data Collection/extraction Methods: We mailed a 66-item questionnaire to everyone in the sample and followed up by telephone with those who did not respond.Principal Findings: We found significant (p<.01) mode effects for 13 of the 21 questions examined in this study. The maximum magnitude of the survey mode effect was an 11 percentage-point difference in the probability of a "yes" response to one of the survey questions. Telephone respondents were more likely to rate care positively and health status negatively, compared with mail respondents. Standard regression-based case-mix adjustment captured much of the mode effects detected by propensity score techniques in this application.Conclusions: Telephone mode increases the propensity for more favorable evaluations of care for more than half of the items examined. This suggests that mode of administration should be standardized or carefully adjusted for. Alternatively, further item development may minimize the sensitivity of items to mode of data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To estimate the associations among hospital-level scores from the Consumer Assessments of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Hospital pilot survey within and across different services (surgery, obstetrics, medical), and to evaluate differences between hospital- and patient-level analyses.Data Source: CAHPS Hospital pilot survey data provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.Study Design: Responses to 33 questionnaire items were analyzed using patient- and hospital-level exploratory factor analytic (EFA) methods to identify both a patient-level and hospital-level composite structures for the CAHPS Hospital survey. The latter EFA was corrected for patient-level sampling variability using a hierarchical model. We compared results of these analyses with each other and to separate EFAs conducted at the service level. To quantify the similarity of assessments across services, we compared correlations of different composites within the same service with those of the same composite across different services.Data Collection: Cross-sectional data were collected during the summer of 2003 via mail and telephone from 19,720 patients discharged from November 2002 through January 2003 from 132 hospitals in three states.Principal Findings: Six factors provided the best description of inter-item covariation at the patient level. Analyses that assessed variability across both services and hospitals suggested that three dimensions provide a parsimonious summary of inter-item covariation at the hospital level. Hospital-level factor structures also differed across services; as much variation in quality reports was explained by service as by composite.Conclusions: Variability of CAHPS scores across hospitals can be reported parsimoniously using a limited number of composites. There is at least as much distinct information in composite scores from different services as in different composite scores within each service. Because items cluster slightly differently in the different services, service-specific composites may be more informative when comparing patients in a given service across hospitals. When studying individual-level variability, a more differentiated structure is probably more appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To identify a parsimonious subset of reliable, valid, and consumer-salient items from 33 questions asking for patient reports about hospital care quality.Data Source: CAHPS Hospital Survey pilot data were collected during the summer of 2003 using mail and telephone from 19,720 patients who had been treated in 132 hospitals in three states and discharged from November 2002 to January 2003.Methods: Standard psychometric methods were used to assess the reliability (internal consistency reliability and hospital-level reliability) and construct validity (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, strength of relationship to overall rating of hospital) of the 33 report items. The best subset of items from among the 33 was selected based on their statistical properties in conjunction with the importance assigned to each item by participants in 14 focus groups.Principal Findings: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated that a subset of 16 questions proposed to measure seven aspects of hospital care (communication with nurses, communication with doctors, responsiveness to patient needs, physical environment, pain control, communication about medication, and discharge information) demonstrated excellent fit to the data. Scales in each of these areas had acceptable levels of reliability to discriminate among hospitals and internal consistency reliability estimates comparable with previously developed CAHPS instruments.Conclusion: Although half the length of the original, the shorter CAHPS hospital survey demonstrates promising measurement properties, identifies variations in care among hospitals, and deals with aspects of the hospital stay that are important to patients' evaluations of care quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]