Beliefs & Services
As a broad-based community coalition, we encourage optimal health for all through high quality services at the lowest cost.
What do we believe?
- Good health is desirable.
- The health system is accountable to the entire local community.
- The complexity of the health system requires all segments to be openly & cooperatively involved.
- Accurate information and information sharing leads to proper decisions.
- High costs don’t guarantee high quality. Costs can be reduced, prevented or contained by stimulating community action.
- Resources are limited; we must use ours wisely.
What are our values?
- Community accountability
- Open dialogue
- Information sharing
- Equal partnership among members
- Collaboration
- Inclusiveness
- Integrity
- Honesty
- Efficient, effective, high quality health care for all
Who do we involve?
- Community health agencies
- Educators
- Employers/ purchasers
- Government
- Health care providers & practitioners
- Individuals
- Insurers
- News media
What do we do?
- Identify & help prioritize the community’s health issues.
- Act as a community catalyst.
- Lead discussion about health directly & through the media.
- Convene diverse groups, ask key questions.
- Present recommendations to the community.
- Develop support from all segments of the community to help solve health issues.
- Help balance the community’s health care resources.
- Provide neutral validation and filtering of information.
What are our services?
- Planning
- Project Evaluation
- Information & Data
- Consultation & Technical Assistance
Planning Services:
Addressing community concerns...
- Resource inventories
- Needs identification/analysis
- Priority determination
- Goal setting
- Alternatives analysis
- Coalition organization
- Evaluation
Project Evaluation Services:
Helping balance community needs...
- Mandated review (Certificate of Need)
- Voluntary review
Information & Data Services:
Keeping up with the trends...
- Health Expo
- First Friday Forums
- Conferences & Seminars
- Health Update Newsletter
- Employers’ Health Plan Costs Survey
- VIP Health Plan Ratings
- Hospital performance measures
- Data Notes
- News media briefings
- Public speaking
What are our strengths?
- Our organizational structure has a single purpose.
- We provide a neutral, objective forum.
- We are areawide, minimizing parochialism.
- We include all sectors of the community.
- We are unique and non-duplicative.
- We provide no direct services to avoid self-serving conflicts.
- We use non-governmental, cooperative approaches.
- We are skilled in community organization.
- We are recognized by community leadership & the media.
- We have durability & are not a vanishing fad.
- We have a 50-yr history of accomplishment.
- We have an experienced professional staff.
What are our priorities?
- Determine community needs, service gaps & unnecessary duplication
- Use our strength in fostering competing interests to work together
- Unite interests of different sectors
- Develop cross-sector support for common activities
- Stimulate cooperative community risk reduction efforts
- Align incentives of sectors to support healthy community efforts
- Overcome unintended results of rapid changes in our health care system
- Emphasize measurement and accountability
- Measure health status
- Assure community-based accountability
- Objectively define community benefits of providers
- Develop accountability measures for:
- Employers
- Health Plans
- Hospitals
- Health Departments
- Government Purchasers
- Focus attention on health status
- Focus attention on access to health care, including gaining coverage for those without
- Stimulate development of market forces
- Stimulate community-wide purchasing strategies, including value purchasing
- Stimulate incentives to reward healthy community efforts