Developed in Collaboration with Vizient and the Healthy Communities Institute
Available for Order
It is essential to evaluate community benefit programs in order to improve programs and ensure the effectiveness of actions taken to address significant health needs in the community.
Community benefit program evaluation is important for compliance reasons as well. The Affordable Care Act added requirements for tax-exempt hospitals to assess the health needs of their communities every three years. The federal regulations implementing those requirements specify that hospitals need to include in their community health needs assessment (CHNA) reports an evaluation of the impact of actions taken to address the significant health needs from their immediately preceding CHNA report (Treas. Reg. § 1.501(r)-3). The intent of these requirements is to increase transparency and accountability around tax-exempt hospitals' obligation to improve community health.
Evaluating Your Community Benefit Impact, developed in collaboration with Vizient and the Healthy Communities Institute, is designed to help community benefit leaders take a systematic approach to evaluating and improving their programs and to meet their legal requirements by applying the knowledge and experience of public health program evaluation to community benefit programs.
While the resource is primarily geared to staff members who work in the area of community benefit, it can also be used by others who need to understand how to assess evaluation findings and use those findings in their work. Other groups that may find this information useful include trustees; executive leaders; strategy; population health; finance and communications staff; community partners; and program participants.
For additional Evaluation tools, examples and resources visit the Evaluation of Community Benefit Programs resource page.
Members Only: view and download a copy of Evaluating Your Community Benefit Impact. (Note: you must be logged in to access)