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Differences in Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Clinician and Group Survey Scores by Recency of the Last Visit
Published Web Location
https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0000000000001134Abstract
Background
Patient experience data can be collected by sampling patients periodically (eg, patients with any visits over a 1-year period) or sampling visits continuously (eg, sampling any visit in a monthly interval). Continuous sampling likely yields a sample with more frequent and more recent visits, possibly affecting the comparability of data collected under the 2 approaches.Objective
To explore differences in Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Clinician and Group survey (CG-CAHPS) scores using periodic and continuous sampling.Research design
We use observational data to estimate case-mix-adjusted differences in patient experience scores under 12-month periodic sampling and simulated continuous sampling.Subjects
A total of 29,254 adult patients responding to the CG-CAHPS survey regarding visits in the past 12 months to any of 480 physicians, 2007-2009.Measures
Overall doctor rating and 4 CG-CAHPS composite measures of patient experience: doctor communication, access to care, care coordination, and office staff.Results
Compared with 12-month periodic sampling, simulated continuous sampling yielded patients with more recent visits (by definition), more frequent visits (92% of patients with 2+ visits, compared with 76%), and more positive case-mix-adjusted CAHPS scores (2-3 percentage points higher).Conclusions
Patients with more frequent visits reported markedly higher CG-CAHPS scores, but this causes only small to moderate changes in adjusted physician-level scores between 12-month periodic and continuous sampling schemes. Caution should be exercised in trending or comparing scores collected through different schemes.Many UC-authored scholarly publications are freely available on this site because of the UC's open access policies. Let us know how this access is important for you.