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If you have not already heard of HCAHPS (pronounced “h-caps”), you will. It is fast becoming part of the regular lexicon in the health care community. HCAHPS (an acronym for Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems) is a hospital patient satisfaction survey established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to help hospitals benchmark performance against other hospitals and themselves.
HCAHPS provides a national standard for collecting and publicly reporting information about patients’ perspectives on hospital care. Since all hospitals take the same survey, the survey data offers an apples-to-apples comparison. The scores are reported on the website www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.