Changes in Requirements for Keying Responses to Open-ended Survey Items
folder_openChanges to Protocols and Guidelines, Data Submissionscalendar_todayPosted October 30, 2009

The Home Health Care CAHPS Survey Coordination Team has reviewed the requirement to key and report open-ended responses to Q32 and Q34 of the Home Health Care CAHPS Survey instrument. The protocol is being clarified as follows:

The decision on whether to key the responses to open-ended survey items, specifically, the “Some other language” (response option 3) in Q32 and the “Helped in some other way” (response option 5) in Q34, is up to each individual home health agency. Vendors will not be required to key and include responses to open-ended survey items on the data files submitted to the Home Health Care CAHPS Survey Data Center. CMS, however, encourages survey vendors to review the open-ended entries so that they can provide feedback to the Coordination Team about adding additional preprinted response options to these survey items if needed.

Changes to the Home Health Care CAHPS Survey Data File Structure and the XML Layouts

The Not Applicable (Code 8) was inadvertently excluded from the response options for survey items Q12, Q13, and Q14 in the following documents in the Home Health Care CAHPS Survey Protocols and Guidelines Manual.

• Appendix J, Home Health Care CAHPS Survey Data File Structure for a Standard Header Record
• Appendix K, XML Data File Layout for Standard Header Record
• Appendix L, XML Data File Layout for Disproportionate Stratified Random Sampling

Note that survey vendors will use the Not Applicable code to code follow-up survey items that were correctly skipped by respondents on their completed surveys (refer to the Decision Rules for Coding Follow-up Questions on Page 77 of the Protocols and Guidelines Manual).

The next version of the Home Health Care CAHPS Survey Protocols and Guidelines Manual will be revised to reflect these changes.