New CAHPS® Cancer Care Survey Assesses Patient Experience in Outpatient and Inpatient Settings

The new Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) Cancer Care Survey offers providers a new tool for understanding and improving their patients’ experiences with cancer treatment in outpatient and inpatient settings. Organizations can download and use three instruments for different cancer treatment approaches: radiation oncology, medical oncology and cancer surgery. The purpose of the survey is to support the efforts of cancer centers, oncology practices, hospitals and health systems to improve the patient centeredness of cancer care.

CAHPS Cancer Care Survey

The CAHPS® Cancer Care Survey assesses the experiences of adult patients with cancer treatment provided in outpatient and inpatient settings, including:

Independent community oncology practices
Cancer centers at community hospitals
Cancer centers at academic medical centers (including those designated as comprehensive cancer centers by the National Cancer Institute (NCI)).

The survey consists of three parallel instruments specific to the major treatment modalities: radiation oncology, medical oncology, and cancer surgery. All three instruments build on the CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey to capture aspects of the experience of care that are important to patients who received cancer treatment and for which these patients are the best source of information.

The main purpose of the CAHPS Cancer Care Survey is to support the efforts of cancer centers, oncology practices, hospitals, and health systems to improve the patient-centeredness of cancer care. The information from this survey could also inform decisions made by providers, patients and their families, accrediting organizations, and payers.

Get the Cancer Care Survey and Instructions

The following documents are available for the Cancer Care Survey:

Radiation Therapy Survey (PDF, 241 KB)
Drug Therapy Survey (PDF, 257 KB)
Cancer Surgery Survey (PDF, 298 KB)
Supplemental items for the Cancer Care Survey (PDF, 181 KB)

Download CAHPS Cancer Care Survey (ZIP, 3 MB) to get the English and Spanish survey instruments in both Word and PDF and guidance on using this survey and its results. Instructions for fielding this survey are in development.

Users of this survey may also want to consult the following guidance:

For assistance, contact the CAHPS Help Line at cahps1@westat.com or 1-800-492-9261.

Quality Measures From the Cancer Care Survey

This survey generates the following measures of patient experience with cancer care:

Getting timely appointments, care, and information (composite measure)
How well the cancer care team communicates with patients (composite measure)
Cancer care team’s use of information to coordinate patient care (composite measure)
Helpful, courteous, and respectful office staff (composite measure)
Cancer care team supports patients in managing the effects of their cancer and treatment (composite measure)
Cancer care team is available to provide information when needed (composite measure)
Involvement of family members and friends (single-item measure)
Availability of interpreters (single-item measure)
Patients' rating of the cancer care team (single-item measure)
Patients’ rating of overall cancer care (single-item measure)

Review measures from the CAHPS Cancer Care Survey.

These measures expand on the measures from the CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey. One key benefit of maintaining the measures from the Clinician & Group Survey is that users of the Cancer Care Survey can compare the scores for those measures to the benchmarks available in the CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey Database.

Supplemental Items for the Cancer Care Survey

The Cancer Care Survey includes several optional, supplemental items that survey sponsors may add to the core questionnaire to gather additional information about the following topics:

Brief History

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released the CAHPS Cancer Care Survey in November 2016. The survey was developed and tested by the American Institutes for Research and the Mayo Clinic with funding from AHRQ, the Outcomes Research Branch of the National Cancer Institute, and the California Health Care Foundation. Learn about the development of the CAHPS Cancer Care Survey.

Page last reviewed March 2017
Page originally created February 2017

Internet Citation: CAHPS Cancer Care Survey. Content last reviewed March 2017. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/cahps/surveys-guidance/cancer/index.html