Concern has been raised that some sample patients may not provide or might not feel comfortable providing survey responses that best reflect the dialysis care they receive if they are completing the ICH CAHPS telephone interview while at the sampled facility receiving dialysis. After discussion with CMS, the Coordination Team has added protocol to help telephone and mixed-mode administration vendors handle this situation.

If a sample patient tells a telephone interviewer that he or she is at the dialysis center when the interviewer contacts the patient, the interviewer should not attempt to complete the interview. Instead, the telephone interviewer should make an appointment to call the patient back at a time that is convenient for the patient, but not while the patient is at the dialysis center.

Please contact the ICH CAHPS Coordination Team via email at ichcahps@rti.org or call (866) 245-8083 if you have any questions.

Please note that the ICH CAHPS website will be unavailable from about 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM ET on Wednesday, June 21, 2017.

Please contact the ICH CAHPS Survey Coordination Team at 1–866–245–8083 or via e-mail at ichcahps@rti.org if you have any questions or need more information about the 2017 ICH CAHPS Survey.

RTI International will be closed on Monday, May 29, 2017 for the Memorial Day holiday. The ICH CAHPS Coordination Team will respond to email and telephone technical assistance inquiries that are received on that date as soon as possible after RTI re-opens on Tuesday, May 30, 2017.

Please contact the Coordination Team via e-mail at ichcahps@rti.org or call 1-866-245-8083 if you have any questions.

Questions asked by participants during and after the February 15, 2017 Introduction to the ICH CAHPS Survey Webinar training session and the February 16, 2017 ICH CAHPS Survey Vendor Update Webinar training session and the answers provided are included here.

Please contact the ICH CAHPS Coordination Team via email at ichcahps@rti.org or call (866) 245-8083 if you have any questions about the answers to these questions or need further clarification.

This is a friendly reminder that the deadline for ICH CAHPS Survey vendors to submit the annual Quality Assurance Plan (QAP) is 11:59 PM Eastern Time on March 31, 2017.

The QAP must describe how the survey vendor will implement, comply with, and provide oversight of all survey and data processing activities associated with the ICH CAHPS Survey. To ensure prompt review and acceptance of your Annual QAP, please follow the procedures listed below:

Locate the version of your most recently approved QAP; that is, the version that was accepted by CMS and the Coordination Team in 2016. Make a copy of that version and accept all tracked changes, creating a clean copy of your QAP. Make all 2017 updates to your clean copy using track changes, so that your document reflects only the changes made since your most recently approved QAP. Make sure to include updates to your QAP if your organization has had changes in ICH CAHPS Survey personnel, changes to protocols or procedures, and/or changes in approved survey mode(s)....

This is a reminder that all in-center hemodialysis (ICH) facilities that are switching to a different ICH CAHPS Survey vendor to administer the 2017 ICH CAHPS Spring Survey must change their vendor authorization on the ICH CAHPS website by 5:00 PM Eastern Time TODAY, February 28, 2017.

Please note that ICH facilities must update the online vendor authorization only if the following applies.

Your facility is participating in the ICH CAHPS Survey for the first time during the 2017 Spring Survey; OR Your facility is switching to a different survey vendor to administer the 2017 ICH CAHPS Spring Survey; OR Your facility entered the 2016 Fall Survey as the last survey period for which the vendor would administer the survey when you originally submitted the authorization form. If your organization will continue to use the same ICH CAHPS Survey vendor that was used to administer the 2016 ICH CAHPS Fall Survey, you do not need to update the online vendor authorization...

On November 10, 2016, the ICH CAHPS Coordination Team posted a document providing information about how survey results from the 2015 ICH CAHPS Spring and Fall Surveys, which are currently posted on the Dialysis Facility Compare (DFC) on the www.medicare.gov website, were adjusted for both data collection mode and for patient mix. That document has been revised to provide more detailed information about the adjustment factors, including an example of an adjustment for patient sex. The revised document is posted here.

Information presented in this document will allow ICH facilities to approximate the effect of patient mix adjustment on their ICH CAHPS Survey results that were posted on DFC in October 2016.

Please contact the ICH CAHPS Survey Coordination Team at 1–866–245–8083 or via e-mail at ichcahps@rti.org if you have any questions about patient mix adjustment....

The training materials that will be used during the Introduction to the In-Center Hemodialysis CAHPS (ICH CAHPS) Survey Webinar Training Session that will be held from 11:00 to 5:00 PM Eastern Time (ET) on February 15, 2017, and during the In-Center Hemodialysis CAHPS (ICH CAHPS) Survey Vendor Update Webinar Training Session that will be held from 1:30 to 4:00 PM Eastern Time (ET) on February 16, 2017, are available on the ICH CAHPS website at the following link.

https://ichcahps.org/Training/TrainingMaterials.aspx

Please note that all CMS-approved ICH CAHPS Survey vendors and any subcontractors that will have a significant role on the ICH CAHPS Survey must register for and attend the Vendor Update training session.

An e-mail message containing instructions for connecting to the training sessions via webinar and telephone will be sent to all registered organizations on February 10, 2017. Please contact the ICH CAHPS Coordination...

The In-center Hemodialysis CAHPS (ICH CAHPS) Survey Administration and Specifications Manual, Version 5.0 is now available on the ICH CAHPS website in MS Word and PDF formats. The protocols and guidelines described in Version 5.0 of this manual are effective immediately and supersede those described in previous versions of the manual. To conserve paper, the ICH CAHPS Survey Coordination Team will print a limited number of hardcopy versions of this manual. Organizations may request a hardcopy manual by sending an e-mail message to the ICH CAHPS Coordination Team at ichcahps@rti.org.

Updated ICH CAHPS Survey protocols and procedures will be reviewed during the Introduction to the ICH CAHPS Survey Webinar training session on Wednesday, February 15, 2017 and during the Vendor Update Webinar Training session that will take place on Thursday, February 16, 2017. A training agenda and the presentation slides for those training sessions will be posted on the ICH CAHPS website by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on February 10, 2017....

Please note that the Coordination Team has made some minor changes to the ICH CAHPS Survey Telephone Scripts. The changes and the reasons for the changes are described below. ICH CAHPS Survey vendors should note that these changes must be made in their CATI systems before the 2017 Spring Survey begins (and they should begin using them in the 2017 ICH CAHPS Spring Survey).



Added the phrase “Would you say” to Question 16: During site visits to survey vendors, the Coordination Team noticed that some respondents used one of the response options in the “Never” to “Always” scale when they answered Q16. Because the Never to Always scale is used in most of the questions that precede Q16, the respondent assumed that the same scale would be used in Q16. To address this issue, we have added the phrase “Would you say…” at the end of Q16, and changed the “Yes” and “No” response options to lower case, which means that the interviewer should read the response options for Q16 to the respondent....