1) For effective planning and administrative purposes, the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health (DPH) uses eight geographical regions known as service planning areas (SPAs). The SPAs range in size, population density, diversity and from rural to densely urban with six out of eight SPAs having more than a million residents (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). California Hospital Medical Center (CHMC) is strategically located in a federally designated medically underserved area and serves a medically underserved population. CHMC encompasses a large area that includes all or portions of the following SPAs areas: SPA4 of Metro Los Angeles; parts of SPA 6; South and SPA 8 of South Bay (CDC, 2010). CHMC is a 318‐bed acute care hospital located at 1401 S. Grand Avenue providing state of the art services to a vibrant and rapidly evolving urban community at the epicenter of America’s second largest city. CHMC has a staff of one thousand eight hundred and professional relationships with more than four hundred local physicians (CHMC, 2016). The human immune virus and the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is most prevalent among the SPAs. Most of these SPAs are affected by poverty and a plethora of other health challenges, sexually transmittable diseases (STDs) and other chronic conditions (CDC, 2010). A) Every year, CHMC conducts a yearly assessment to identify strategic priorities based on the assessment. The scanning function serves a lens to the organization’s external world. It enables the organization to view a number of external trends either current or emerging trends. These current or emerging trends are diverse, unorganized, sporadic, mixed, and undefined but the scanning process organized them into various categorizes, accumulated and evaluated (Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L, 2013). For fiscal year 2015 to 2016, California hospital conducted their environmental assessment via interviews through phone calls and focus groups. The interview was designed to collect reliable and representative information about health and other needs and challenges faced by the community, access and utilization of health care services, and other relevant topics. As with the interviews, the focus group topics also were designed to collect representative information about health care utilization, preventive and primary care, health insurance, access and barriers to care, emergency room use, chronic disease management and other community issues. The identified health needs and drivers of health were then presented during a community forum to allow for a richer discussion of secondary data and additional considerations (CHMC, 2016). The monitoring function involves tracking issues that have been identified in the scanning process. The monitoring process achieves four important functions: ‘it researches and identifies additional sources of information; it adds to the environmental database; it attempts to confirm or disprove issues trends, developments, dilemmas, and the possibility of events and attempts to determine the rate of change within issues.” (Ginter, et al, 2013 p. 1700). The main objective of the monitoring function “is to accumulate a database around an identified issue. The database will then be used to confirm or disconfirm the trend, development, dilemma, or possibility of an event and to determine the rate of change taking place within the environment.” (Ginter, et al, 2013 p. 1700). During the monitoring process, California hospital collected over one hundred indicators of secondary data and compared them to relevant benchmarks like Healthy People 2020, California rates or Los Angeles County. To present demographs, mortality, morbidity, health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment, secondary data were collected
…show more content…
As earlier stated, the community health needs and drivers were identified from both primary and secondary data sources using the magnitude or size of the problem relative to the portion of population affected by the problem, as well as the seriousness of the problem. To examine the size and seriousness of the problem, these indicators from the secondary data were compared to the available benchmark. Those indicators that performed poorly against a benchmark were considered to have met the size and seriousness criteria and were added to the master list of health needs and drivers. Concurrently, health needs and drivers that were identified by stakeholders in the primary data collection were also added to the master list of health needs and
As earlier stated, the community health needs and drivers were identified from both primary and secondary data sources using the magnitude or size of the problem relative to the portion of population affected by the problem, as well as the seriousness of the problem. To examine the size and seriousness of the problem, these indicators from the secondary data were compared to the available benchmark. Those indicators that performed poorly against a benchmark were considered to have met the size and seriousness criteria and were added to the master list of health needs and drivers. Concurrently, health needs and drivers that were identified by stakeholders in the primary data collection were also added to the master list of health needs and