DOI: 10.1177/1077558713508205
http://mcr.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/11/1077558713508205
Med Care Res Rev published online 13 November 2013
Ron D. Hays, Steven Martino, Julie A. Brown, Mike Cui, Paul Cleary, Sarah Gaillot and
Marc Elliott
Evaluation of a Care Coordination Measure for the Consumer Assessment
of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) Medicare Survey
Abstract
There is widespread interest in assessing care coordination to improve overall care
quality. We evaluated a five-item measure of care coordination included in the 2012
Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Medicare survey
(n = 326,194 respondents, 46% response rate). This measure includes patient reports of
whether their personal doctor discusses their medicines, has medical records and other
relevant information, and is informed about care from specialists, and whether the patient
gets help in managing care and timely follow-up on test results. A one-factor categorical
confirmatory factor analytic model indicated that five items constituted a coherent scale.
Estimated health-plan-level reliability was 0.70 at about 102 responses per plan. The
composite had a strong unique association with the CAHPS global rating of health care,
controlling for the CAHPS core composite scores. This measure can be used to evaluate
relative plan performance and characteristics associated with better care coordination.
