(Spirit Lake)– Lakes Regional Healthcare and Dickinson County Public Health are seeking public input when it comes to healthcare needs in the community. LRH President and CEO Jason Harrington says it fulfills a requirement of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed in 2010…
“So every three years, and every five years, the two organizations are required to do a community health needs assessment. And it’s really important because we get quite a bit of data we can look through and from various sources but part of that data really needs to be feedback from the community on what they see as the critical needs for healthcare in Dickinson county and the Lakes Region.”
Harrington says the survey is confidential and anonymous…
“You can go to our website and there’s a link to a Survey Monkey survey. Throughout the community between now and September 30th, people will see a number of postcards. On that postcard you can scan a QR code. I’m getting old enough that QR codes, I’d rather just go to a link. So you can go to our website and go to a link. But you scan the QR code and it will take you directly to the survey. As I mentioned it takes about five to 10 minutes. It’s very quick to do, but very important to get that feedback from the healthcare organization’s perspective.”
Harrington adds the information is valuable for future planning…
“There will be a combination of data points that we use as we put together the health improvement plan. One of them will be the survey results, one of them will be national public health data. Part of that will be our own internal data knowing what we know in terms of disease states and prevalence in the population and those sorts of things. But really need to get, we don’t intend to assume what we believe the community needs and what their experiences have been, so we’re really asking their feedback as part of that.”
Harrington says they plan to have a strategy determined in early 2025 involving focus groups so they can start addressing needs as quickly as possible.
