Assessing the needs of a community — through preparation, coordination and implementation — does more than check a box. It provides hospitals with insight into where time, money and resources should be dedicated to improve population health. This is the purpose of the Community Health Needs Assessment. A CHNA includes multiple moving parts and contributors who: interview community leaders; hold stakeholder meetings; conduct patient surveys and query results; establish and participate in community focus groups; and analyze population health metadata. These steps can be time-consuming and unclear, leaving many to question whether they’re accurately evaluating their community’s needs — or just trying to meet compliance requirements. But, what if there’s a better way? In this blog, we’ll break down three steps you can use to simplify your CHNA, so you can drive the best outcomes for patients and providers. Three ways to simplify the CHNA 1. Prepare Not-for-profit hospitals must conduct...

Achieving Patient-Centered Medical Home recognition sets your practice apart from others as you focus on the quadruple aim: continual improvement of outcomes, decreased expenditures and increased patient and staff satisfaction. PCMH adopts repeatable processes, policies, communication, documentation and reporting, which is ─ the backbone of value-based incentive programs and payer initiatives nationwide. Using a team approach to best understand patient populations and meet patients where they are leads to more equitable healthcare across all patient populations. To keep the benefits of PCMH recognition, practices must keep their medical homes current and sustain the program from year to year. Sites must demonstrate in Q-PASS (the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s web-based evaluation tool) that their medical home workflows are in place by their stated reporting date. NCQA updated the PCMH standards, guidelines and annual reporting requirements for 2023. Standards and Guideline...