Specifications include, but are not limited to: A comprehensive evaluation and comparison of healthcare needs, and services available, in Kitsap County, from present through a 20-year window, to identify deficiencies or shortfalls and strengths or successes, and an analysis of opportunities to correct these deficiencies with specific recommendations to improve equitable and timely access to comprehensive and highquality healthcare services for Kitsap community members. Project Objectives: 1. Work closely with, and receive direction from, an advisory panel consisting of Health Board members and Health District representatives, with possible additional representatives from other sectors including public health, the hospital, emergency medical services, federally qualified health centers, tribes, medical community, local community organizations, health board, behavioral health, and transportation, education, and human services. 2. Convene and interview focus groups of Kitsap County residents about their opinions on, and experiences with, the local healthcare system and recommendations to improve it. 3. Perform key informant interviews of local practitioners and persons who work on healthcare access issues regionally and nationally. 4. Evaluate and incorporate relevant data from ongoing health and community support systems assessments being performed by partner agencies in collaboration with Kitsap Public Health District staff. 5. Identify industry standards for healthcare accessibility/capacity and provide quantifiable services data for Kitsap relative to comparable counties and state and national averages for the following areas: o Number of hospital beds, o Number of physicians by medical expertise o Number of nurses working in hospital and ambulatory settings o Availability, locations, and affiliations of urgent and primary care facilities o Availability, locations, and affiliations of emergency medical services o Availability and locations of rehab services, addiction treatment, and behavioral health services o Availability and locations of long-term and respite care facilities o Availability and types of translation services in different systems o Availability of specialty care services (lab, dialysis, surgical, mental health) o And other related data, as identified by the advisory panel and project leads. 6. Document and project current and future healthcare system demands versus healthcare system capacity. 7. Identify methods to increase access to, and quality of, local healthcare services. 8. Identify structure(s) that may enhance or degrade performance of local healthcare delivery systems, including an analysis of what impacts formation of a public hospital district would have on the Kitsap healthcare system delivery. 9. Identify current strengths in our healthcare system and measures needed, if any, to maintain them. 10. Identify ways access gaps in Kitsap may disproportionately impact different demographic groups. 11. Provide comparative data on what other jurisdictions or states have done to increase medical service availability. 12. Identify costs necessary to increase services or improve degraded services
