Community Health Needs Assessment

Assessing Community Health

Western North Carolina is home to a unique collaboration between hospitals and health departments working together to identify health needs and improve health. Together, Mission Health and other hospitals and health departments in the region conduct Community Health Assessments every three (3) years to determine the greatest health needs in the communities we serve.

Mission Health’s hospital facilities serve 18 counties in western North Carolina, with seven (7) of those counties included in our primary service areas. Representatives from each hospital partner with local health departments in their primary service counties and with WNC Healthy Impact to assess and prioritize community health needs, and plan to address them.

The hospitals within Mission Health define their primary service areas as follows:

How We Plan to Address Community Health Needs

In the Community Health Assessment process, hospitals and health departments produce parallel reports detailing how the community health needs were identified and prioritized, and each entity’s strategy for addressing the identified needs. These reports are made publicly available by each entity (Mission Health facility reports are linked below).

Reports produced by each hospital:

• Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) Executive Summary
• Hospital Implementation Strategy

Reports produced by each county health department:

• Community Health Assessment (CHA)
• Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP)

Health Priorities and Reports

Community health needs assessments and implementation strategies are facility-specific and unique to the communities served by each hospital. Implementation strategies are based on collaborative planning, and outline the ways each hospital will support specific efforts to address the identified health needs as part of a community-wide plan.

You can find each hospital’s reports linked below, along with priorities from the counties they serve.