During a recent OAS CAHPS vendor training, the OAS CAHPS Project Team covered some developments in the OAS CAHPS realm.
They gave more detail on the OAS CAHPS mode experiment from 2019, where they tested a few new options, including web-only, web with mail follow-up, and web with telephone follow-up. Web-only was less effective with older and rural populations, and availability of email addresses varied by type of surgery and patient age. Ultimately, they decided that email availability was too low nationally to allow web-only as an approved mode.
CMS anticipates approval of two new modes, each with response rates surpassing that of mail-only and telephone-only:
- Web with mail follow-up
- Web with telephone follow-up
These changes are expected to be announced in the calendar year 2022’s Federal Register rule, which we will likely see a proposed version of in summer 2021. That rule should also tell us if OAS CAHPS will remain voluntary in calendar year 2022.
Additionally, CMS is considering revising response options for a few questions, and removing some of the “About You” demographic items at the end of the survey to reduce the burden on the patient.
If you have further questions on the latest CMS update, please email our PRC CAHPS® team at [email protected].