Part of the Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement Project (MBQIP), the intent of the HCAHPS initiative is to provide a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients’ perspectives on hospital care. While many hospitals have collected information on patient satisfaction, prior to HCAHPS there was no national standard for collecting or publicly reporting patients’ perspectives of care information that would enable valid comparisons to be made across all hospitals. The HCAHPS Survey is composed of 29 items: 19 items that encompass critical aspects of the hospital experience (communication with nurses, communication with doctors, responsiveness of hospital staff, communication about medicines, discharge information, care transition, cleanliness of the hospital environment, quietness of the hospital environment, overall rating of hospital, and recommendation of hospital); three items to skip patients to appropriate questions; five items to adjust for the mix of patients across hospitals; and two items to support congressionally-mandated reports.