A Good Working Relationship with Your Vendor

To manage your vendor(s) effectively, you need to establish a monitoring system based on regular communications and scheduled updates.

Monitoring the Survey Administration

Once the contract is awarded and the survey vendor gets started on your CAHPS project, you should focus on working with them and monitoring their progress.

Using CAHPS Protocols

It is your responsibility to ensure that your vendor follows the CAHPS protocols, a rigorously tested set of instructions for survey administration and data analysis. These protocols are provided in the Survey and Reporting Kit available for the product you have selected.

For the CAHPS Health Plan Survey, it is also acceptable to follow the protocols established by National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for the CAHPS 3.0H survey. Please note that your vendor must follow the CAHPS 3.0 or CAHPS 3.0H protocols if you want to submit data from the Health Plan Survey to the National CAHPS Benchmarking Database.

Recommended Management Tools

The following tools can help you with the task of overseeing your vendor:

• A project timeline from the vendor. Match their timeline with yours and make sure the two are consistent. Monitoring adherence to the projected timeline is the first step in assuring that your project is proceeding appropriately. Download sample timeline. (PDF Version [ 17.38 KB])
• Weekly data collection reports from the vendor.
• Monthly progress reports, which should detail the current status of data collection and project costs, as well as any deviations from the project goals.
• Weekly conference calls with the project team and the vendor to discuss their progress, next steps, any problems, and plans to resolve them. Regular meetings within your team and with the vendor to review the project’s status and schedule will keep you updated and bring early attention to any potential problems.

Monitoring the Development of Reports

The reporting task begins when you have received the data file and output from the analysis program from your vendor. If you are also using a vendor to produce the reports, your job is to oversee the vendor's work and to ensure that they understand the reporting needs of your audiences.

Reporting Resources offers general advice as well as guidelines for reporting the results of specific CAHPS surveys.

Sponsor's Responsibilities. Whether or not you use a vendor, you as the sponsor are accountable for the following tasks during this stage of the project:

• Checking the timeline to ensure that the final printed reports are ready in time for distribution;
• Approving the draft template with the final text and placeholders for the data;
• Soliciting feedback from the advisory committee on the report;
• Seeking buy-in from health plans, providers, and other key stakeholders;
• Approving the final report with the data;
• Printing the reports; and
• Distributing the reports.