HCAHPS: Pay-for-Performance and Value-Based Purchasing

Course overview

Clinicians need to be well informed about current healthcare policies and regulations, and how changes impact reimbursement and clinical practice. Pay-for-performance (P4P) will continue to be the predominate model for healthcare reimbursement. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 established the hospital value-based purchasing program (VBP), which is an initiative from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to incentivize acute care hospitals to improve clinical outcomes and lower the costs of care (CMS, 2021a). The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) is a standardized patient experience survey and core component of VBP and P4P. The goal of this course is to equip healthcare professionals with knowledge of the fundamentals of HCAHPS and how HCAHPS scores impact hospital reimbursement as a component of VBP and P4P initiatives.