[Federal Register Volume 88, Number 56 (Thursday, March 23, 2023)]
[Notices]
[Pages 17575-17576]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2023-05988]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality


Potential Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems 
(CAHPS[supreg]) Survey on Prenatal and Childbirth Care Experiences in 
Ambulatory and Inpatient Settings: Request for Information

AGENCY: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, HHS.

ACTION: Notice of Request for Information regarding a potential 
Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS[supreg]) 
survey to assess patients' prenatal and childbirth care experiences in 
ambulatory and inpatient settings.

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SUMMARY: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) invites 
public comment in response to this Request for Information (RFI) about 
a potential Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems 
(CAHPS[supreg]) survey to assess patients' prenatal care and childbirth 
care experiences in ambulatory and inpatient care settings. Currently, 
no CAHPS instrument is available that is specifically designed to 
measure prenatal and childbirth care from the patient's perspective in 
these settings. Accordingly, this RFI seeks comments regarding 
methodologically sound approaches to assessing prenatal and childbirth 
care experiences in healthcare settings about topics such as 
communication with providers, respect, access to services, and 
patients' perceptions of bias in receiving care.
    This RFI also seeks comments about any (1) existing patient 
experience surveys or survey items that might be incorporated into 
public domain CAHPS ambulatory and inpatient prenatal and childbirth 
experience surveys; and, (2) special considerations or concerns 
associated with the collection of such information. This RFI will help 
inform the development of scientifically sound surveys to potentially 
measure the experience of patients receiving prenatal and childbirth 
care.

DATES: Comments on this notice must be received by May 5, 2023.

ADDRESSES: Interested parties may submit comments electronically to 
[email protected] with the subject line ``Prenatal and Childbirth Care 
Experience Survey RFI.''

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Questions may be addressed to Caren 
Ginsberg, Director, CAHPS and SOPS Programs, Center for Quality 
Improvement and Patient Safety, [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: AHRQ is seeking public comment about survey 
characteristics and data collection approaches and strategies to 
optimize the meaningfulness of patient experience information from 
patients receiving prenatal and childbirth healthcare, that is, care 
received in a hospital or birthing center, during labor, delivery, and 
their stay in the hospital or birthing center. AHRQ's CAHPS Program 
advances scientific understanding of patient healthcare experiences 
using surveys developed for different healthcare settings. The CAHPS 
surveys cover topics that are important to patients and which patients 
are best able to assess, such as communication with providers, shared 
decision making, and access to health care services. CAHPS surveys 
measure care experiences; that is, what happened or how often something 
happened, in a health care encounter. CAHPS surveys do not collect 
information about availability of specific services; limitations to 
receiving specific services or procedures; or patient satisfaction 
(e.g., patients' expectations for, or how they felt about, their care). 
Information collected by CAHPS surveys can motivate and focus quality 
improvement efforts and/or choice of providers by survey sponsors, 
health care organizations, clinicians, patients, consumers, and other 
stakeholders.
    Specific questions of interest to AHRQ include, but are not limited 
to:
    1. What are the highest priority aspect(s) of patient experiences 
with prenatal healthcare that should be asked about in a survey?
    a. Why are these aspect(s) of patient experience a high priority 
for inclusion in a survey of prenatal healthcare?
    b. What other topic area(s) should be included in a new survey 
assessing prenatal healthcare?
    2. What are the highest priority aspect(s) of patient experiences 
with childbirth healthcare that should be asked about in a survey?
    a. Why are these aspect(s) of patient experience a high priority 
for inclusion in a survey of childbirth healthcare?
    b. What other topic area(s) should be included in a new survey 
assessing patient experiences with childbirth health care?
    3. For which prenatal care settings should measures and/or surveys 
be developed? For example, should measures and/or surveys be developed 
for group practices? Hospitals? Birthing centers? Ambulatory care 
practices? Other settings?
    4. For which childbirth care settings should measures and/or 
surveys be developed? For example, should measures and/or surveys be 
developed for hospitals? Birthing centers? Ambulatory care practices? 
Other settings?
    5. What, if any, challenge(s) are there to collecting information 
about patient experiences with prenatal and childbirth healthcare?
    6. What actions or approaches would facilitate the collection of 
information about the experience of patients with prenatal and 
childbirth healthcare?
    (a) What data collection approach(es) would be most likely to 
promote participation by respondents to a survey of prenatal and 
childbirth healthcare (e.g., web-based; paper-and-pencil; etc.)?
    (b) Are there any way(s) that data collection approach(es) would 
differ based on whether patients received healthcare in inpatient care 
settings compared to ambulatory care settings?
    7. Which survey measure(s) that assess prenatal and/or childbirth 
care experiences are currently being used? Please note that these 
surveys or items might be found in the patient satisfaction domain. 
Feel free to include them in response to this RFI.
    (a) Which respondent groups (e.g., patients in inpatient settings; 
family members; providers; etc.) are asked to complete these survey(s)?
    (b) How are these currently used survey(s) administered (for 
example, paper-and-pencil; web-based; etc.) to patients?
    (c) What information is collected in these survey(s) that assess 
prenatal care and/or childbirth experiences? How

[[Page 17576]]

well do these surveys perform? What are the strengths of the survey(s) 
currently in use?
    (d) What content area(s) are missing from these survey(s) that are 
currently in use?
    (e) Which content area(s) are low priority or not useful in these 
currently used survey(s)? Why are they not useful?
    (f) How are the results and findings of these current survey(s) 
used to evaluate and/or improve care quality in inpatient and 
ambulatory healthcare settings? Are the results and findings of these 
current survey(s) used for other purposes?
    (g) Are there any item(s) that address perceived bias in care that 
have been used to assess prenatal and/or childbirth care experiences of 
patients? How have these item(s) measured or operationalized 
``perceived bias in care?'' What, if any, limitations do these item(s) 
have in measuring ``perceived bias in care?''
    Respondents to this RFI are welcome to address as many or as few of 
these questions as they choose and/or to address additional areas of 
interest not listed.
    This RFI is for planning purposes only and should not be construed 
as a policy, solicitation for applications, or as an obligation on the 
part of the Government to provide support for any ideas in response to 
it. AHRQ will use the information submitted in response to this RFI at 
its discretion, and will not provide comments to any respondent's 
submission. However, responses to this RFI may be reflected in future 
initiatives, solicitation(s), notices of funding opportunities, or 
policies. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no 
obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or 
provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information 
submitted. No proprietary, classified, confidential or sensitive 
information should be included in your response. The contents of all 
submissions will be made available to the public upon request. 
Submitted materials must be publicly available or able to be made 
public.

    Dated: March 20, 2023.
Marquita Cullom,
Associate Director.
[FR Doc. 2023-05988 Filed 3-22-23; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4160-90-P