Patient Perceptions of Their Experience at Dialysis Center

Boston—An understanding of the factors that drive dialysis patients’ experiences is crucial in providing care. It is unclear whether the In-Center Hemodialysis Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (ICH-CAHPS) survey reflects themes that contemporary hemodialysis patients have identified as important.

Kathryn S. Gray, MS, and colleagues at DaVita Clinical Research, Minneapolis, Minnesota, distributed an anonymous paper survey at 29 dialysis facilities. They reported results of the survey during a poster session at the NKF Spring Clinical Meetings in a poster titled Patient-Reported Experience of Dialysis Care: Comparison to ICH-CAHPS.

The survey asked, “What are the three most important things about your experience at your dialysis center?” To enable theme identification and analysis, the researchers entered survey responses, along with all items from the ICH-CAHPS, into NVivo qualitative data analysis software (Burlington, MA).

Of the 1000 surveys distributed, patients completed 734. Thirty themes were identified from the combination of  ICH-CAHPS survey items and patient responses. Of the 30 themes, 21 were spontaneously mentioned by patients and were included on the ICH-CAHPS survey. Eight themes were mentioned by patients but were not reflected on ICH-CAHPS, and one theme was mentioned on ICH-CAHPS only.

Of the themes mentioned by both patients and ICH-CAHPS, four were mentioned proportionately more frequently by ICH-CAHPS than by patients, and six were mentioned more frequently by patients than by ICH-CAHPS.

In summary, the researchers said, “The ICH-CAHPS survey captures many, but not all, themes that patients report as being important to their experience; the frequency with which some themes are mentioned on ICH-CAHPS may not be reflective of their relative importance to patients. Development of survey instruments that reflect patient-identified themes may enable the provision of care that more closely reflects patient priorities.”

Source: Gray KS, Cohen DE, Sibbel S, et al. Patient-reported experience of dialysis care: Comparison to ICH-CAHPS. Abstract of a poster presented at the National Kidney Foundation 2019 Spring Clinical Meetings, May 8-12, 2019, Boston, Massachusetts.