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Announcement

Revised English and Spanish CATI Scripts (INTRO2 and Next of Kin) have been posted
folder_openChanges to Survey Materialscalendar_todayPosted February 28, 2023

Revised English and Spanish CATI scripts that reflect the following CMS-approved changes are available through the “Survey and Protocols” webpage. The changes made were motivated by feedback RTI received during the 2022 Web mode experiment.

  • Regular and proxy CATI scripts: streamlined INTRO2 by removing redundancies.
  • Regular CATI script only: added new “next of kin” instruction and script.

NOTE: We will post another announcement when the revised Russian and Vietnamese CATI scripts are available, likely early March 2023.

The new next-of-kin protocol allows the interviewer to provide an additional piece of information to share if this the person’s relationship to the sample member is volunteered. The following is an excerpt from the regular CATI script:

IF PERSON ON PHONE VOLUNTEERS THEY ARE SAMPLE MEMBER'S PARTNER, CHILD, PARENT, SIBLING, GRANDCHILD, OR POWER OF ATTORNEY AND THEY ASK WHY WE ARE CALLING:

I would like to talk to [SAMPLE MEMBER'S NAME] about their experiences with home health care that they received from [HOME HEALTH AGENCY].

IMPORTANT: This sentence can ONLY be shared if the person on the phone volunteers that he or she is a next-of-kin to the sample member as defined in the excerpt above. By “volunteers” CMS means that your interviewers cannot ask if they are a next-of-kin.

Survey vendors are invited to adopt these script revisions at their earliest convenience between now and the July 2023 sample month when the revised race response options are required to be implemented.

If you have questions, please contact the HHCAHPS Survey Coordination Team via e-mail at hhcahps@rti.org or call toll-free at (866) 354-0985.