Finding Nursing Evidence 

CAHPS®—Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems

Develops and supports the use of a comprehensive and evolving family of standardized surveys that ask consumers and patients to report on and evaluate their experiences with health care. These surveys cover topics that are important to consumers, such as the communication skills of providers and the accessibility of services.

Users of CAHPS survey results include patients and consumers, quality monitors and regulators, purchasers, provider organizations, and health plans. These individuals and organizations use the data to inform their purchasing or contracting decisions and to improve the quality of health care services.

TalkingQuality

Communicating with consumers — health care report cards

Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)

HCUP databases bring together the data collection efforts of State data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations, and the Federal government to create a national information resource of patient-level health care data (HCUP Partners). HCUP includes the largest collection of longitudinal hospital care data in the United States, with all-payer, encounter-level information beginning in 1988. These databases enable research on a broad range of health policy issues, including cost and quality of health services, medical practice patterns, access to health care programs, and outcomes of treatments at the national, State, and local market levels.