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Announcement

Changes to the Announcements Page on the Home Health Care CAHPS (HHCAHPS) Web Site
folder_openOther Announcementscalendar_todayPosted August 2, 2011

The HHCAHPS Coordination Team has redesigned the Announcements Page on the HHCAHPS Web site, and hopes that this change will help users find recent and previous announcements more quickly. We encourage HHCAHPS Survey vendors and home health agencies (HHAs) to take a look at the redesigned page to become familiar with it so new and previous announcements can be found more readily.

Note that the redesigned Announcements Page allows you to see at a glance the five announcements that have been posted most recently. It also allows you to search for an announcement about a specific topic in a number of ways. A summary of the key features of the redesigned Announcement Page is provided below. Note that these changes are for the Announcement Page only. You will be alerted of the most recent posting of an announcement by the date beside the News/Announcement link in the Quick Links on the Web site’s home page.

We would like to know about your experience using the Announcement Page, so please feel free to send any questions, comments, or suggestions that you have about the Announcement Page to the Coordination Team at hhcahps@rti.org.

  • Recent Announcements. A link to the five announcements that have been posted most recently are listed at the top of the page under the “Recent Announcements” banner. Click on the title of the announcement to view the full announcement. If you would like to print an announcement, simply click on the print icon that appears beside the message.
  • When you first open the Announcement Page, the titles of the five most recently posted announcements will also appear under the Announcements banner in the middle of the page. Click on the title of an announcement to view the full text of the announcement.
  • Search for an Announcement About a Specific Topic. If you would like to search for an announcement about a specific topic, you can do so either by searching a specific category, by month or date the announcement was posted, or by conducting a key word search. See the left-most side of the Announcement Page for the following links.
  • Categories. In this section of the Announcement Page, you can search for a specific announcement based on a topic or one of the following “categories.” A count of the number of announcements in each category appears after the category name, in parentheses.
    • Changes to Protocols and Guidelines, which contains all announcements about changes in the survey protocols and guidelines. For example, the announcement about vendors providing the values for ADLs that the HHA provides on the monthly patient information file on the XML file is included in this category
    • Changes to Survey Materials, which contains all announcements about changes to any of the survey materials, including the Protocols and Guidelines Manual, the HHCAHPS Survey Questionnaire (for any of the approved language versions), the mail survey cover letter, etc.
    • Data Submissions, which contains all announcements about data submissions, including reminders of upcoming data submission deadlines, changes to the XML template, reminders of correct format and protocols to the XML template or the validation schema, or any information having to do with data submissions and the data submission tool. Note that some announcements that constitute a change in the protocols and guidelines may affect how data are coded on the XML file. Any such announcements therefore will be included in both the Changes to Protocols and Guidelines and in the Data Submissions categories.
    • Information for Home Health Agencies. This category will contain information for HHAs, and will include announcements about HHCAHPS participation requirements, information about requirements for obtaining an exemption from participating in the HHCAHPS Survey, notices that “Preview Reports” are ready for viewing (when public reporting begins), etc. Because vendors need to know about HHA participation requirements, they are encouraged to view these announcements as well.
    • Other Announcements. Any announcement that clearly does not fit into one of the categories described above can be accessed at this link.
  • Announcements Archive. You can click on the calendar to bring up any announcements posted on a specific date in the current month. Although all dates are clickable, only those dates surrounded by a grey box have an announcement associated with that date. Note that on some dates two or more announcements may have been posted; if this is the case, when you click on a specific date the system will show all announcements posted on the same date.
  • You can also see all announcements posted in a specific month during the last 12 months by clicking on the display box under Monthly and then choosing a month from the drop down box.
  • Search by Announcements. Immediately below the Announcements Archive is a search box where users can search by entering a key word or phrase. For example, if you would like to find an announcement about ADLs, enter ADLs in the search field and all announcements related to ADLs will be shown.
  • Note that regardless of the search method that you use, the list of announcements related to a topic will appear under the “Announcements” as soon as you click to indicate the category or month under which an announcement was posted.
  • When you have finishing viewing an announcement and would like to search for a different announcement by category, date of the announcement or key words, simply click on the “tag” icon that appears beside the message that you just viewed.