Community Assessments
A Community Assessment is an analytic tool designed to provide data and information to the community by
- Providing a common understanding of local population needs and health care resources,
- Benchmarking the effectiveness of the current health care delivery and financing systems,
- Identifying specific opportunities for improvement in health status and health care delivery in Kansas City,
- Identifying gaps between needs and resources and targeting opportunities for feasible change,
- Providing a “fact-base” to facilitate community-level action planning and priority setting,
- Establishing an information baseline for future community monitoring efforts.
The assessment looks at four major components:
Health Assessments
- Mortality rates/conditions
- Maternal/child health
Resource Assessments
- Hospital beds/services
- Physicians in area
- Public health
- Diagnostic equipment
Value Assessments
- Utilization patterns
- Quality of care
- Community costs
Disease Category Assessments
The assessment does not seek to profile individual hospitals or physicians, to compare their performance. Rather it attempts to identify needs and opportunities for improvements in the local health care system.