Page 17 - 2021 MHA Start-up Guide

Clinical signals: a significant recurrence of symptoms in an Emergency Department, like asthma
attacks, or a high occurrence of chronic disease, or low rates of community services such as
immunizations .

Utilization signals: high hospital readmission rates, low frequency of outpatient visits, high cost
of inpatient treatment and frequent use of an Emergency Department.
Demographic data, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, public health studies,
localized insurance rates and the local public health system can all be valuable in drilling down
on morbidity and mortality information . But to truly understand the issues, you’ll need to unlock
the shared knowledge stored in the relationships among community members . It’s time to go out
into the field.

Answering the Who:
Understanding Your Community
Once you’ve identified community health
needs within the data, it’s time to get to the root
cause . That’s where anecdotal information like
interviews and surveys of community residents
and leaders can help, supplying the social and
cultural knowledge that exists between the
numbers. For example, could low frequency of
outpatient visits be due to a lack of health ed-
ucation, a language barrier or low cultural sen-
sitivity on the part of providers? Is the ED fre-
quently used because the population is largely
undocumented and uninsured? Are elderly
residents simply unwilling to leave a small and
familiar neighborhood to seek non-emergency
care?

This information can provide you with a blue-
print for your service model, but it’s often locked
away in the minds, culture, customs and rela-
tionships within the community . It’s up to you
to unearth it .

How to engage your community
A high level of community engagement in these early days not only surfaces and validates im-
portant data, but creates client buy-in and helps your staff develop the cultural competencies
and trust necessary to deliver top-notch care . It creates avenues for dialogue with future clients
and builds support among non-healthcare-affiliated groups. It’s also an opportunity to tap the
brains of like-minded experts .

6 Hill, Caterina et al . “Knowledgeable Neighbors: A Mobile Clinic Model for Disease Prevention and Screening in Underserved Communi-
ties .” American Journal of Public Health 102 .3 (2012): 406–410 . PMC . Web . Aug 2017 .

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