CAHPS Clinician & Group Visit Survey

The Visit Survey, which is one of the Clinician & Group Surveys, asks patients to report on their experiences with providers and office staff at their most recent visit to a doctor's office. This instrument addresses feedback from many users regarding the need for a CAHPS survey that focuses on experiences during a single visit rather than over a period of time. More targeted feedback about a visit can provide medical practices with valuable information for monitoring and improvement. Also, many physicians are accustomed to seeing survey results for a visit, which they sometimes perceive as more valid and credible.

The Visit Survey includes a standardized questionnaire for adults and children; an adapted set of supplemental items that specifically ask about the most recent visit is in development.

Languages. All questionnaires and supplemental items will be provided in English and Spanish; however, only the Adult Spanish questionnaire is available at this time. For help in producing questionnaires in other languages, please go to Translating Surveys and Other Materials.

To download the Visit Survey and associated instructions, go to: Get Clinician & Group Surveys and Instructions.

Differences Between the Visit and 12-Month Surveys

Time Referents. As the name suggests, the Visit Survey is meant to capture information about a patient's most recent visit. However, only questions about doctor communication and office staff ask about the most recent visit. Questions about access to care use a 12-month reference period. This decision was based on testing conducted in Spring 2009. To learn more about this testing, go to: Development of the CAHPS Clinician & Group Visit Survey.

In the Child Visit Survey, questions about development and prevention also use a 12-month reference period because those aspects of care do not occur at every visit.

Response Scales. The only difference is that the questions about experiences at the most recent visit use a three-point expanded Yes/No scale: "Yes, definitely/Yes, somewhat/No."

Item Content. The Visit Survey includes three items that are not in the 12-Month Survey:

Whether you would recommend the provider.
Time since your most recent visit.
Wait time at your most recent visit.

Quality Measures from the Visit Survey

The Visit Survey produces the same set of patient experience measures as the 12-Month Survey:

Getting Timely Appointments, Care, and Information
How Well Providers (or Doctors) Communicate With Patients
Helpful, Courteous, and Respectful Office Staff
Patients' Rating of the Provider (or Doctor)
Provider's (or Doctor's) Attention to Your Child's Growth and Development (Child only)
Provider's (or Doctor's) Advice on Keeping Your Child Safe and Healthy (Child only)

[Note: Survey sponsors have the option of asking respondents about their "provider" or their "doctor."]
However, the descriptions of the communication and office staff measures must address the difference in the items, i.e., that they ask about a specific visit rather than a year of visits.
Read about all of the composite and rating measures from this survey: Patient Experience Measures for the CAHPS Clinician & Group Surveys (PDF, 297 KB; PDF Help).
To learn about describing the measures from the Visit Survey, selecting scores to report, and displaying the results to consumers, refer to How To Report Results of the CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey (PDF, 956 KB; PDF Help).

Development of the Visit Survey

The Visit Survey builds on the previous development of the 12-Month Survey. To read about the development of the Visit survey, go to: Development of the CAHPS Clinician & Group Visit Survey.

Clinician & Group Surveys and Instructions

What's Available

To find out what documents are available to support your use of the Clinician & Group survey, read the following document. (PDF Help)

What's Available for the Clinician & Group Surveys English - PDF (188 KB)

Option 1: Download a complete set of Clinician & Group Surveys and Instructions

Get all the documents you need to administer the survey, analyze the data, and use survey results.

Download 12-Month Surveys and Instructions

Use this survey to ask adults and children about their experience with care from a doctor’s office in the last 12 months.
Download 12-Month Surveys with
Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Items and Instructions

Use this survey to ask adults and children about their experience with care from a patient-centered medical home.
Download Visit Survey and Instructions

Use this survey to ask adults and children about their experience with care at their most recent visit to a doctor’s office.

Option 2: Download one or more documents for the Clinician & Group Surveys

The table below lists documents available for the Clinician & Group Surveys.

Use the filter below to limit the list to documents associated with a step in the survey process.
Download the documents you want by adding them to your queue.
You can view the documents by selecting the PDF or Word links. (PDF Help; Word Viewer).