RMS to conduct surveys for accountable-care organizations

BALDWINSVILLE — Research & Marketing Strategies, Inc. (RMS) announced it will conduct surveys on behalf of accountable-care organizations (ACO) during the 2014-15 fiscal year.

RMS is a Baldwinsville–based marketing and market-research firm.

ACOs are required to conduct surveys as part of their involvement in Medicare programs, RMS said in a news release.

The Baltimore, Md.–based Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) for ACOs survey-project team offered “conditional” approval of RMS as a vendor for 2014-15 survey administration.

CAHPS is part of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which operates under the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, according to the CAHPS website.

ACOs are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to provide coordinated, “high quality” care to their Medicare patients, RMS said.

The CAHPS Survey for ACOs enables those groups participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program and the Pioneer ACO model to meet their requirement to measure patient experience of care.

RMS is “excited” to offer its survey-administration services to another group of health-care providers, Megan O’Donnell, RMS manager of healthcare analytics, said in the news release.

“The CAHPS family of surveys has been growing rapidly over the last several years and RMS is pleased to be a part of this exciting time in the healthcare industry,” said O’Donnell.

The annual CAHPS Survey for ACOs collects data through a survey mailing and a follow-up phone call to non-respondents to measure patient experience, RMS said.

Approved survey vendors must adhere to “strict” protocols and processes in the survey administration. The protocols and processes seek to ensure that the vendor distributes the survey to all patients in a “consistent manner” so that the surveys can generate “accurate comparisons,” according to RMS.  

In addition to the ACO-CAHPS survey, RMS is also a survey vendor for In-Center Hemodialysis CAHPS (ICH-CAHPS); Hospital CAHPS (H-CAHPS); Home Health-CAHPS (HH-CAHPS); and Clinician & Group-CAHPS (CG-CAHPS), the local firm said.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com