Skip to main content

Community Health Needs Assessment: Best practices to follow

Community Health Needs Assessment data

Updated essential CHNA guide available here. 

For hospitals, the question arises every three years: How can we conduct a Community Health Needs Assessment that delivers more insight for better population health with less burden? Allocating appropriate resources and finding the bandwidth and expertise to execute a fully compliant CHNA is a challenge — particularly for first-time submissions or during strategic transitions.

As hospitals prepare for their next CHNA, the following information can guide strategies to maximize assessment tools, metrics and analyses — all for better interventions and outcomes. And, if you want to know all the components, our essential Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) guide provides a comprehensive overview of the CHNA, including its purpose, requirements, data analysis and examples. 

Simplify a complex process without burdening staff.

It’s difficult for hospitals to achieve efficiencies of scale for a process like CHNA that only occurs every three years. That’s why insight from experts consistently examining the process of CHNA year-round is so valuable. DataGen’s CHNA Advantage™ makes your assessment more robust without requiring additional staff or resources.

CHNA Advantage’s turnkey tools and metrics apply to four phases of the assessment process:

    1. Prepare and mobilize – Assemble teams and collaborators, determine resources and data sources, map timelines and identify the best ways to communicate.
    2. Envision and plan – Create survey, project, rollout and communication plans based on vision and strategy sessions.
    3. Implement the plan and interpret – Administer survey, evaluate and analyze responses, analyze data and identify community interventions based on the results and findings.
    4. Prioritize, compose and submit – Work with partners to make intervention and implementation decisions as part of the CHNA report draft and submission.

    DataGen’s approach facilitates collaboration and information-gathering from local residents, health departments and community-based organizations for a CHNA submission that fully complies with federal and state requirements.

    Easily leverage the data and healthcare analytics you don’t have.

    Beyond CHNA must-haves, hospitals need a way to activate their data wish lists for better community outcomes. These categories include:

    • demographics;
    • social determinants of health;
    • healthy/unhealthy behaviors;
    • healthcare utilization;
    • health outcomes; and
    • data from CHNA partner collaborators.

    CHNA Advantage offers hospitals 200 metrics across more than 20 domains for the most robust CHNA possible. In addition to a hospital's own data, sources include County Health Rankings, CDC PLACES and Socially Determined, Inc. The latter incorporates social risk data and scores across six SDOH domains: finance, food, housing, transportation, health literacy, and digital.

    It’s never too early to start thinking about your next CHNA. A new process combined with new data can help deliver a new standard of care. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NCQA PCMH 2025 annual reporting: Standards and guidelines

For practices recognized under the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model, understanding and meeting the NCQA PCMH 2025 annual reporting requirements is critical to sustaining recognition.  NCQA continues to refine its NCQA PCMH standards and guidelines , emphasizing team structure, care continuity and data integrity. Here’s what your practice needs to do to stay compliant and ensure a smooth reporting process. This blog is a continuation of our piece back in July 2024, which listed three updates to NCQA PCMH's 2025 annual reporting requirements . What is NCQA PCMH?  The NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is a model of care that emphasizes care coordination, patient engagement and continuous quality improvement. The PCMH framework is designed to improve healthcare outcomes by fostering strong patient-provider relationships and enhancing team-based care.  Since its inception, the NCQA PCMH program has evolved to...

One step closer: CMS finalizes TEAM updates

On July 31, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized updates to the Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM) in the federal fiscal year 2026 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) final rule .  TEAM, a mandatory Medicare bundled payment initiative launching Jan. 1, 2026, was first introduced in the FFY 2025 IPPS proposed rule. 745 hospitals will advance into TEAM in the beginning of the year – 735 hospitals located in a Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA) chosen for mandatory participation and 10 hospitals that have voluntarily opted into the model.    Earlier this year, CMS proposed changes to TEAM and sought feedback from hospitals, associations and other stakeholders. The final rule now cements those updates — changes that will directly impact TEAM participation requirements, quality measurement, payment methodologies and care delivery strategies. Any future model changes will go through the same rulemaking process.    Key T...