Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

Advice from the Experts on How to Successfully Complete Your CHNA

By Lee Ann Lambdin 

2022 will be a big year for Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs). With the requirement that they are conducted every three years, this is the year for many hospitals to undergo a systematic collection, analysis, and dissemination of information about the health of their community.

With that in mind, we thought it would be helpful to gather some of the brightest minds we know, experts on how to successfully conduct a CHNA. As Stratasan’s SVP of Healthcare Strategy, and someone who has more than 10 years of experience working with CHNAs, I hosted the session alongside Dr. Stephanie Bailey, Amanda Ables, and Carol Quest. You can read full bios for each of our panelists at the end of this post. 

We considered this session to be a support group for those completing CHNAs this year or even next year. It was an opportunity to hear from a panel of experts who've been there and struggled and come out the other side successful.

We recorded this session, and you can listen to it here. Below, you’ll find a transcript from this discussion, so you can reference the valuable insights shared by our panel in the weeks and months to come as you complete your next CHNA.

Connecting Your Members with the Right CHNA Partner 

By Lee Ann Lambdin and Megan Reeves

A Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) identifies a community’s most significant health issues and needs through systematic data collection and analysis. Every three years, non-profit hospitals are required to submit a CHNA report and adopt an implementation plan to address the identified needs so they can maintain their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt or “charitable” status.

As 2022 quickly approaches, many of your member hospitals will be due to complete their new CHNA. In this post, we’ll discuss the ways you can help your members prepare for and navigate the CHNA process, including:

• Ensuring your members are clear on what they must do to stay federally compliant
• Finding ways to promote the real value that can be gained from a CHNA (beyond compliance)
• Offering resources to members who need help executing their CHNA 

The CHNA process may take several months and resources to complete, so now is the time for your member hospitals to be thinking about their 2022 CHNAs. Keep reading to learn how you can help.

Unprecedented Times Call for Unprecedented CHNA Processes

By Lee Ann Lambdin

Every three years, non-profit hospitals, and many for-profit hospitals, take part in a months-long process called a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA). A CHNA is designed to identify the community’s greatest health needs before they develop an action plan to address them. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many hospital officials have been forced to alter their approach, attempting the intimidating prospect of a virtual CHNA. They’ve switched to virtual sessions or telephone interactions to gather and share information. Granted, it‘s not ideal to complete an entire CHNA remotely, but it is possible. Stratasan had the opportunity to perform three fully remote CHNAs in 2020. In this post, we’ll discuss how to conduct a successful virtual CHNA.

Put Your CHNA to Work to Address these Issues 

By Lee Ann Lambdin

Over the past several years, Stratasan’s Strategic Advisory Services team has completed more than 75 CHNAs. This work is done side by side with a hospital and their community in an effort to assess the health of the community and develop a plan for addressing top health concerns. Over time we’ve noted trends in common health concerns and how community involvement is so important to make the changes needed to correct these issues. In this post, we’ll discuss these findings in more detail.

Execute Your CHNA and Improve Community Health

By Lee Ann Lambdin

One sentence in the Federal Register requirement for CHNAs (page 19, section 6, paragraph E) calls for “a description of the resources potentially available to address the significant health needs identified through the CHNA.” While this one line may seem innocuous at face value, after 9 years of performing CHNAs, I’ve seen this one little sentence take on significant importance in improving the health of communities.

Initially, this requirement was seen as just that, a requirement. However, communities are now seeing how little cross-communication of community resources takes place and how critical this communication is to providing valuable health resources to their residents. Hospitals and communities are beginning to use the Community Asset Inventory as an online catalog for community members who need access to practical, helpful health resources.

Stay IRS Compliant and Improve the Health of Your Community

By Lee Ann Lambdin

The August 17th issue of Becker’s Hospital CFO Report details how the IRS has revoked an unnamed hospital’s tax exempt status for failing to conduct a community health needs assessment (CHNA), adopt an implementation strategy, and make it widely available to the public. This punishment is beyond the standard $50,000 excise tax penalty typically issued for failure to meet the CHNA requirements. The article states the IRS referred to "egregious failures when reviewed in the context of [section] 501(r)."

When asked why they failed to fulfill the CHNA expectations, officials at the small rural hospital said they lacked the staffing to comply with 501(r) requirements. While this is the first revocation of tax exempt status that I’m aware of, I know that having your tax exempt status revoked can financially devastate a hospital.  

Performing a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) is more than just a practice required by law for certain hospitals. When executed well, it can also dramatically further publicity and marketing initiatives, supporting your annual planning process and enhancing the execution of your strategic growth goals.

CHNAs provide so much beneficial information that one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospitals has brought on Stratasan to execute 17 CHNAs on their behalf. These CHNAs will benefit their community outreach and population health initiatives.

Your Community Health Needs Assessment is complete with lots of community involvement.  Your community has assisted in prioritizing the most important health issues.  Your hospital has selected and prioritized the health issues and goals that it will work on, and has justifications for the issues it will not work on.  There is still one more requirement to be met: an implementation plan with monitoring and evaluation of efforts.  Stratasan suggests creating a Health Issues dashboard containing as much of the following information as possible.