Community Health Needs Assessment
The Affordable Care Act, which was enacted on March 23, 2010, has changed the way that healthcare is thought of and viewed in the United States. Section 501(r) requires every 501(c)(3) hospital organization to meet four general requirements. The purpose of this document is to establish the fourth point: “Conduct a community health needs assessment (CHNA) at least once every three years.” This is effective for tax years beginning after March 23, 2012.
Although a CHNA can be quite lengthy, our goal is to lay the results out in an easy to follow outline. We will start by introducing the project, our facility and the counties we serve. We will then describe the approach we used to get comprehensive data, which includes a description of the survey we used and the community leaders we interviewed. We will end with discussing any gaps that were identified, the top five health concerns we hope to address in the next three years, and what community resources are already available.