Community Impact
Project Descriptions
Measuring the Community Impact of Critical Access Hospitals
University of Southern Maine
Expected completion date: August 2008
Principal Investigator: Andrew F. Coburn, Ph.D., 207-780-4435 or
andyc@usm.maine.edu
Contact Person: John A. Gale, M.S., 207-228-8246 or jgale@usm.maine.edu
This multi-year project focuses on the development of a set of community impact performance indicators for Critical Access Hospitals along with accompanying data collection strategies. The indicators were developed based on a review of the literature on the ways in which hospitals impact and benefit their communities, a review of national and state community benefit reporting systems, and the input of a panel of community benefit and rural hospital experts. The majority of the indicators are consistent with the community benefit reporting standards developed by the Catholic Health Association of the United States, VHA, Inc., and the Public Health Institute which have become the "de facto" standard in community benefit reporting. We have worked within the conceptual framework of these existing reporting systems to maintain consistency with and facilitate comparison across these systems as well as to avoid creating an additional reporting burden for CAHs.
Although we have aligned our indicators with national community benefit standards, our framework goes beyond the narrower, legal construct of community benefit reporting standards used to support the tax exempt status of not-for-profit hospitals. Our community impact indicators build on this framework but also allow for a more comprehensive measurement of the ways in which CAHs positively impact their communities. The primary purpose is to create indicators to assist CAHs in adopting a more strategic approach to the management and communication of their community impact activities.
This project continues our work in developing these indicators and related data collection strategies through the pilot testing of the indicators with a sample of CAHs in three to four states. The CAHs will be asked to evaluate the proposed community impact indicators and data collection tools. This feedback will be used to refine and enhance the indicators. State Flex officials will also be asked to evaluate the indicators in terms of their value in documenting Flex Program performance. The pilot test will continue in Year 5 as the indicators are revised based on feedback from the participating CAHs and State Flex officials.