The HCAHPS Survey as a Potential Tool for Measuring Organizational Interprofessional Competency at American Hospitals Nationwide: A Content Analysis Study of Concept Validity

 Interprofessionalism is grounded in a core set of guiding principles for educational and practice initiatives among healthcare professionals. It has been shown to improve proximal outcomes, such as patient satisfaction. However, the link between interprofessionalism and more distal outcomes, such as patient health outcomes, has proven difficult to demonstrate quantitatively. METHODS Our research team examined the concept validity of an existing tool to determine its feasibility to serve as a potential proxy measure of organizational interprofessional competency for use in large-scale quantitative research. We compared the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice expert panel report to the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey, using manifest content analysis. RESULTS 61% of the HCAHPS survey questions capture the domains of interprofessional competency identified in the expert panel report, and 57% reflect multiple competency domains simultaneously. CONCLUSION We recommend that the HCAHPS survey questions identified here be examined quantitatively to determine their psychometric validity as a proxy measure of organizational interprofessional competency.