Prioritize Health Needs
After you have assessed the health needs of your community and identified the significant health needs, you are ready to prioritize these needs.
Though there may be many significant health needs in your community, your hospital might only have the capacity to address a subset of these needs. To successfully prioritize the significant health needs, establish criteria to determine a priority health need and implement a process to systematically apply those criteria.
Click on an item below for details:
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Step 1: Set Criteria for Prioritized Health Needs
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Establish which criteria participants should use to prioritize health needs before you begin. Here are some examples of criteria that can be used to prioritize:
- Alignment with facility’s strengths/priorities/mission
- Magnitude - number of people impacted by problem
- Severity - the rate or risk of morbidity and mortality
- Opportunity to intervene at prevention level
- Opportunity for partnership
- Addresses disparities of subgroups
- Existing resources and programs to address problem
- Solution could impact multiple problems
- Feasibility of intervention
- Availability of evidence-based approaches
- Importance of problem to community
- Economic burden on community
- Consequences of not intervening
- Evaluation results on the impact of actions taken to address the health need since your immediately preceding CHNA
Important Note for Hospitals:
The IRS requires that community input must be taken into consideration for prioritizing significant health needs from the following three groups: a) at least one representative of a state, regional or local governmental health department with knowledge of the health needs of the community; b) members of medically underserved, low-income, and minority populations in the community served by the hospital facility, or individuals or organizations serving or representing the interests of such populations; and c) written comments received on the hospital facility's most recently conducted CHNA and most recently adopted implementation strategy. -
Step 2: Explore and Choose Prioritization Method
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The following prioritization methods are examples of the types of different processes for you and your community to use.
DOT METHOD/DOTMOCRACY
Quick and simple method that works well with large groups. Individuals are given a set number of dots (stickers) and vote for the needs that they believe meet the established criteria.
MULTI-VOTING TECHNIQUE
Great method to narrow a lot of options down to a few by allowing individuals to vote for a set number of topics in each round. After each round is completed, only the top results are included in the next round.
NOMINAL GROUP TECHNIQUE
Ideal method for small groups of decision makers who have a deep knowledge of selection criteria. This method includes generating topics, recording topics, discussing topics and then voting on topics.
STRATEGY GRID
Good method for using only two criteria and with groups of decision makers who have a deep knowledge of the criteria and the issues. The strategy grid allows decision makers to focus on topics that will have the best results.
PRIORITIZATION MATRIX
Good for small to medium sized groups who are using multiple criteria to select priorities. In this method participants systematically analyze each priority based on the criteria.
PAIRED COMPARISONS
An advanced method where participants compare pairs of health needs based on different criteria using a matrix.
HANLON METHOD
A complex method that incorporates baseline data into an objective analysis of the criteria and the different health needs.
Other Useful Resources
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Tips for the Final Report
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Make sure to document the prioritization process and criteria that you used and include the results.
See an Example:
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From the IRS
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These proposed regulations require the CHNA report to include prioritized description of the significant health needs of the community identified through the CHNA, along with a description of the process and criteria used in identifying certain health needs as significant and prioritizing those significant health needs.
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