Purchaser Business Group on Health to Sunset Patient Assessment Survey Program

PBGH will sunset the Patient Assessment Survey (PAS) program, effective July 31, 2024. For more than two decades, the PAS program has been pivotal to advancing high-quality, equitable health care in California. PAS was the statewide source of patient experience data for quality improvement and value-based care.

The Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA) removed patient experience measures based on PAS data from its AMP incentive payment program, beginning in 2025. Without incentives to participate, the business case for providers to report the data is diminished and the PAS program will no longer be sustainable.

PAS was an important source of information on quality and generated the largest patient experience data set in the country. PAS was the only patient experience data set large enough to stratify by race and ethnicity to understand disparities in patient experience. It has provided crucial data for accountability and facilitated public transparency and health equity through its detailed insights into patient experience.

This is a loss for California. Without the PAS program, California stakeholders will lose access to:

• Statewide patient experience results and benchmarks
• Public transparency of patient experience results via OPA Report Cards
• Granularity of performance of provider organizations used by health plans to understand the underlying performance of their contracted medical groups and target improvement for NCQA, Medicare Advantage Stars, DMHC requirements, etc.
• Stratification of patient experience measures for health equity insights

Following completion of the current cycle, PBGH will develop and disseminate a final impact report detailing the program’s history, impact on the industry and innovative patient experience research on disparities, telehealth and behavioral health screening and access.

Former PBGH CEO David Lansky, Ph.D., called for an overhaul of our entire measurement and reporting system in the U.S. to one of patient priorities in a 2022 Health Affairs commentary. He articulated the critical role of data that elevates the patient voice to achieve patient-centered care. Barriers to widespread use of patient experience measurement include outdated and burdensome measurement tools and data collection systems, costs to administer, and lack of incentives to collect and use the results. As noted in our recent request for information response to U.S. Sens. Whitehouse and Cassidy about primary care, “A new, innovative and simplified approach to collect and use patient experience data should be a national priority.”

Despite this setback, PBGH remains dedicated to enhancing health care quality and patient outcomes — including patient experience of care. PBGH will focus on the next generation of patient experience measurement and continue our emphasis on developing long overdue, ground-breaking systems that enable real-time care delivery improvements, benchmarking, transparency and payment incentives through outcomes-oriented data. PBGH and its members will continue its commitment to transforming U.S. health care and redesigning how quality is measured and reported to ensure that patient centered measurement is the basis of a transformed, patient-centered health care system.