Prepare
Preparing for Community Health Needs Assessment
Before you embark upon a Community Health Needs Assessment, it’s helpful to know who is on this journey with you. Establish a Community Health Needs Assessment Team.
Conducting a community health needs assessment and developing an implementation strategy are good opportunities to initiate or strengthen relationships within the communities you serve. Engaging the community will not only improve your assessment and implementation strategies, it can lead to successful collaborations for addressing community health needs.
It will be important for your Community Health Needs Assessment Team to form consensus on mission, goals, roles, actions and a timeline. Your team will want to identify (and then secure) needed resources as well as develop a budget.
Kansas Resources
National Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
Preparing for the Assessment
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1. How do I get started on performing a community health assessment?
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The best way to start would be to review the contents of the Health Assessment and Improvement Tools section of Kansas Health Matters (KHM). KHM partners created this section using elements of the nationally recognized KU Community Toolbox.KHM's Health Assessment and Improvement Tools exist to give persons interested in performing a community health assesment, background in the five areas important to the process. Examples are provided, and there is access to all of the technical assistance materials prepared and presented for counties by KHM partners. There is also a section of how to videos. Finally, there are copies of assessments and health improvement plans, prepared by counties, available for review. These are Kansas specific products prepared by local agencies.There is no one-size-fits-all community health needs assessment. KHM partners recommend organizations (local health departments and hospitals) review other assessments and decide what best fits their organization. It is especially important that the community health needs assessment and any health improvement plan be developed locally as community ownership is higher enhancing the ability to make improvements in population health. The Frequenty Asked Questions are a gateway to the many experts that have collaborated in supporting health assessment and improvement planning. If there are questions, contact us and KHM Partners will work to address them and share the information with the public health and hospital communty.
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2. Is there a report that can reference hospital useage by zip code? To show where residents of one community are going for their hospital needs?
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The quick answer is yes and no. Now, let me explain. Our internal database would give us that info for both patients treated in the ED and for those who were admitted to the hospital. So, my first plan of attack would be to contact our decision support planning team to get me that data. However, if I wanted admission data on other hospitals, I'd go to two places first to see whether or not they had the data:
1) American Hospital Directory will provide you with the top 3 zipcodes for inpatient origin. Their webpage is the following:
http://www.ahd.com/free_profile.php?hcfa_id=9d966a96b83cb939a320157b16b9f6da&ek=ba89f7328093a0ecfcf691e4da0eb1d4
2) The Kansas Hospital Association (KHA) has a patient migration map that shows percentage of patients who remain in their own county when obtaining hospital care. That map is at http://www.kha-net.org/dataproductsandservices/stat/hospitalutilization/patientmigration/
3) KHA has a Hospital Inpatient Discharge data set in which nearly 80% of all Kansas hospitals are represented that includes patient zip codes. It would exclude ED and outpatient services but you might be able to get what you want here. It's worth a try. I'd just call KHA and ask to speak to the person who manages their Hospital Inpatient Discharge data. If you can't get what you want from them, the other place I'd try is the Kansas Department of Health & Environment (KDHE) as they too have lots of reports and will even run some customized reports for you.
But I am not aware of any report that will deliver all zipcodes for all IP/OP/clinical services that are provided by individual hospitals. -
3. Who should be part of our team working on Community Health Needs Assessment?
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Conducting a community health needs assessment and developing an implementation strategy are good opportunities to initiate or strengthen relationships within the communities you serve. Engaging the community will not only improve your assessment and implementation strategies, it can lead to successful collaborations for addressing community health needs.
Productive and meaningful community engagement throughout the process can also lead others in the community to take ownership of needs that cannot be addressed by the hospital or health department. Federal law regarding community health needs assessment requires hospitals to take into account input from persons who represent the broad interests of the community served by the organization, including experts in public health.
Keep in mind, some of your best and most interesting information may come from community members with no particular credentials except that they're part of the community. It's especially important to get the perspective of those who often don't have a voice in community decisions and politics -- low-income people, immigrants, and others who are often kept out of the community discussion. In addition, however, there are some specific people that it might be important to talk to. They're the individuals in key positions, or those who are trusted by a large part of the community or by a particular population.
A suggested list to consider inviting to take part in your Community Health Needs Assessment can be found on the PREPARE page in the Tools section.