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A patient satisfaction survey asks patients about access, communication and the visit itself, and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) publishes a public model to borrow from: the CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey. Keep yours short, use multiple-choice answers for most questions, and host it with a vendor that signs a BAA, because a survey tied to a visit is health information. Curve Forms from Curve Compliance hosts surveys under the BAA Curve signs on every plan, and survey answers are never sent to ad platforms.
Book a call. Want patient surveys and intake forms hosted under a BAA, with answers kept away from your ad platforms? Curve Forms from Curve Compliance runs guided, multiple-choice surveys you can send by link or QR code, and Curve's team does the setup, typically live in about a week. Book a call with Curve.
What CAHPS measures
AHRQ's CAHPS program “began in 1995,” and “Its purpose is to boost our scientific understanding of patient experience with healthcare as part of a larger effort to advance the delivery of safe, patient-centered care.” AHRQ also draws a line worth keeping in mind when you write questions: “The terms patient satisfaction and patient experience are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing” (AHRQ). In practice, experience questions ask what happened (did you get an appointment when you needed one?), while satisfaction questions ask how the patient felt about it. Good surveys use mostly the first kind, because the answers point to something you can fix.
For practices, the relevant instrument is the Clinician & Group Survey. AHRQ says “The 3.0 and 3.1 versions of the CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey ask patients about their experiences with care from an ambulatory care provider over a 6-month period,” and lists the measures they produce (AHRQ):
- Access. “Getting Timely Appointments, Care, and Information.”
- Communication. “How Well Providers Communicate With Patients.”
- Coordination. “Providers' Use of Information to Coordinate Patient Care.”
- Staff. “Helpful, Courteous, and Respectful Office Staff.”
- Overall. “Patients' Rating of the Provider.”
There is also a visit-based version. AHRQ describes the Clinician & Group Visit Survey 4.0 (beta) as one that “asks about experiences at the most recent visit whether in-person, by phone, or by video,” and notes that the beta label “means that the instrument has not yet been field tested by the CAHPS Consortium or approved as a CAHPS survey” (AHRQ). A short post-visit survey of your own sits closer to that visit-based approach.
Patient satisfaction survey template: questions by section
The questions below follow the CAHPS domains, but they are written for this page, not taken from the official instrument. “CAHPS is a registered trademark of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)” (AHRQ), so if you want to use the CAHPS name, use the official survey and AHRQ's guidance.
| Section | Example questions | Answer type |
|---|---|---|
| Access | When you asked for this appointment, how soon did you get one? Was it easy to reach us by phone or online? | Multiple choice |
| Communication | Did your provider explain things in a way that was easy to understand? Did your provider listen carefully to you? | Multiple choice (always, usually, sometimes, never) |
| Coordination | Did your provider seem to know your history? Did someone follow up with your test results? | Multiple choice |
| Office staff | Were the front desk staff helpful and respectful? Did check-in go smoothly? | Multiple choice |
| Virtual visits | Did your video or phone visit work without problems? Was it as useful as an in-person visit? | Multiple choice, shown only after a virtual visit |
| Overall | Would you recommend this practice to a friend or family member? | Multiple choice (definitely yes to definitely no) |
| Comments | What is one thing we could do better? | Long text, optional |
| Follow-up | May we contact you about your answers? | Checkbox |
Keep it to the questions you will act on. A survey that fits on one phone screen per section, with one optional comment box at the end, is easier to finish than a long grid. Ask the same core questions every time, so you can compare months and locations.
Multiple choice vs open text
Multiple-choice answers are easy to count and compare over time. Open text tells you why, but it is also where patients volunteer health details ("my knee still hurts after the injection"), so treat every comment as part of the record. Keep comments inside the survey tool and away from marketing tools, spreadsheets on personal drives and public review widgets.
That matters most when a glowing comment tempts the marketing team. Under 45 CFR 164.508, “a covered entity must obtain an authorization for any use or disclosure of protected health information for marketing,” with narrow exceptions, so a patient's words that identify them belong on your website only with a signed authorization. If you also display reviews on your own site, the FTC rule on consumer reviews makes it unlawful to materially misrepresent that the reviews shown “represent most or all the reviews submitted” when reviews “are being suppressed” based on their ratings or negative sentiment (16 CFR 465.7). How these rules apply to your survey program depends on how you use the answers, so talk to your counsel before a comment becomes a testimonial; see HIPAA marketing authorizations.
Sending surveys by email and text
Send the survey soon after the visit, while the patient still remembers it, and send one link with no details in it. A survey URL like ?visit=fertility-consult, or a subject line that names the service, tells every system that sees it what care the patient received. Under 45 CFR 160.103, information that relates to “the provision of health care to an individual” and identifies them is individually identifiable health information, and a survey tied to a visit fits that description.
The tools around the survey count too. HHS says regulated entities “are not permitted to use tracking technologies in a manner that would result in impermissible disclosures” of PHI to tracking vendors (HHS). Keep ad pixels off the survey page, avoid sending survey invitations through a marketing email tool that bars health data in its terms, and run the free website scan on the page that hosts the survey. To compare survey vendors, read HIPAA compliant survey tools, including the SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics Directory entries.
How Curve Compliance helps
Curve Forms gives you the building blocks a satisfaction survey needs: radio (multiple choice), multi-select, checkbox and long-text fields, logic that shows a question only when it applies (such as virtual-visit questions), and guided flows that show one step per card with a progress bar. Share it with a hosted link in your own post-visit message, a QR code at checkout, or embed it on your site with a script that resizes itself. Surveys are hosted by Curve under the BAA Curve signs on every plan, and submissions never pass through a third-party form tool.
Responses arrive in the Leads inbox, and a spreadsheet download makes monthly reporting simple. Read-only and full-access roles control who sees comments, every view or export of submissions is logged, and a retention window keeps old answers from piling up. The step-by-step funnel shows where people drop off, so you can see which question makes patients quit. Form answers, page titles and free text are never sent to ad platforms. Curve Compliance is SOC 2 Type II, and its team does the setup, typically live in about a week. Book a call to plan your survey with Curve's team. The same tool handles the paperwork before the visit; see the new patient form and medical history form templates.
Sources, checked November 9, 2026: AHRQ, CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey; AHRQ, About the CAHPS Program and Surveys; 45 CFR 160.103; 45 CFR 164.508; 16 CFR Part 465; HHS, Use of Online Tracking Technologies.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a patient satisfaction survey?
A patient satisfaction survey asks patients to report on a visit or recent care: getting an appointment, how well the provider communicated, the office staff and their overall view. Keep it short, mostly multiple choice, and send it soon after the visit.
What questions should a patient satisfaction survey ask?
Cover access, communication, coordination, office staff and an overall question, then one optional comment box. Those areas mirror the measures AHRQ lists for the CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey (AHRQ).
What is CAHPS?
CAHPS (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) is AHRQ's program for surveys of patient experience; it “began in 1995” (AHRQ).
Are patient surveys covered by HIPAA?
When a covered provider runs them, usually yes: answers tied to an identifiable patient's care are individually identifiable health information under 45 CFR 160.103, so the survey host needs a BAA.
Which survey tools sign a BAA?
Some do, often only on certain plans. See HIPAA compliant survey tools for each vendor's own terms, or host the survey in Curve Forms under the BAA Curve signs on every plan.
Can I use survey comments as testimonials?
Only with the patient's written authorization if the comment identifies them, because HIPAA requires an authorization for any use of PHI for marketing (45 CFR 164.508).
What is the difference between patient satisfaction and patient experience?
Experience asks what happened during care; satisfaction asks how the patient felt about it. AHRQ says the two terms “are not the same thing” (AHRQ).
Talk to Curve Compliance
Book a call. Want a patient satisfaction survey that keeps answers private and ties into your intake forms? Curve Forms hosts surveys and forms under the BAA Curve signs on every plan, and Curve's team does the setup, typically live in about a week. Book a call with Curve.