Funding Priorities: Data-Driven Approach for Prioritizing Community Health Needs in Vulnerable Communities
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Dale Ainsworth; Heather Diaz; Mathew C. Schmidtlein
- Source
- Health promotion practice. 20(4)
- Subject
- medicine.medical_specialty
Nursing (miscellaneous)
Process management
Best practice
Qualitative property
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Hospital Administration
Health care
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
medicine
Humans
030212 general & internal medicine
030505 public health
business.industry
Health Priorities
Public health
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Health promotion
Community health
Needs assessment
Public Health
0305 other medical science
business
Needs Assessment
- Language
- ISSN
- 1524-8399
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 mandated nonprofit hospitals to complete community health needs assessments (CHNAs) every 3 years to identify priority health needs for the community they serve. The CHNA must include input from the community in the determination of health needs. Large variation exists across CHNAs on methods used in the integration of quantitative and qualitative data both in the determination and prioritization of health needs and those needs chosen by the hospital for community benefit funding. An important part of the CHNA is the prioritization of the needs identified, as it can influence hospital community benefit funding decisions. This article describes a method for clearly integrating qualitative and quantitative data in the CHNA process offering a best practice strategy for conducting CHNAs. The method uses an approach based on flexible, objective decision points that can be used to both generate a list of significant health needs and a prioritization of those needs based on community input, influencing funding priorities of the hospital. The method provides a standard approach useful across multiple hospital CHNAs in both rural and urban settings, and in collaborative-based CHNAs (local public health departments and hospitals) as well.