716-868-6448
HMS ASSOCIATES
Since 1990, HMS Associates has been a comprehensive resource for all your community health needs assessment and implementation strategy needs. We have been assisting hospitals, philanthropic organizations, health care collaboratives, and government focus on community generated health care improvements and impacts. HMS offers a series of analytic, community engagement and process management capacities which are available as individual components or an all inclusive package.
Regulatory compliance with the IRS is essential and community benefit impacts are the real pay-off.
COMMUNITY HEALTH NEEDS ASSESSMENT SERVICES
Expert Guidance Every Step of the Way
Assessing
Responsive assessments are more than data, analysis and community input, often framed by IRS, regulators or funders requirements. The overall process must be tailored specifically to the type of problem or need and most importantly the interest levels and capacities of the local service system.
​
The definition of the service area is critical, both in terms of geography and cultural composition. Benchmarking systems must reflect these distinctions. Multiple unmet needs always emerge and the process for selecting the most significant unmet needs must be explicit, systematic and transparent.
Putting You On the Path to Success
Strategizing
Successful strategic implementation plans or guides are predicated upon the buy-in of relevant partners and organizations. Buy-in is facilitated by participation in the assessment and priority selection process.
A Sensitivity to Culture and Collaboration
Focusing on Underserved and Rural Communities
HMS has conducted assessments for inner city low income communities and isolated rural areas with very small populations. We understand the complexities of cultural disparities and small population analyses and often tailor our proprietary needs assessment methodologies to thoroughly examine or diagnose needs which in turn aids in the identification of the best interventions or strategies.
​
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES
Why select HMS?
Primary Care and Preventive Health Care Needs Assessment Index
A multifaceted tool which identifies potential priorities by community and need component: Demographics, Health Status, Reproductive Health and Health Care Services Use. Medicare claims related analyses are available to augment an understanding of the needs of the elderly or disabled.
Local Health Status and Services Needs Surveys
Internet based surveys containing behavioral risk factors and other areas identified by advisory groups provide input on local perceptions of needs, important for gauging existing community sentiment and potential support for new or expanded programs and services.
Actionable Strategies and Guides
Strategies and guides are reflective of local interests and capacities with a key distinction between potential actions to be taken by organizations required to develop the plans, such as, hospitals or public health departments and partners or funders,
Highly credentialed leadership and management
All HMS Associates projects are lead by Gregory Bonk, founder of HMS. He has completed over 25 assessments and guides a team of professionals with credentials selected from a wide variety of relevant disciplines. Of significant note is that project management is not delegated to less experienced professionals and Greg leads all interactions with the client agency, health care providers and community leadership. He has worked on both sides of the aisle, for government agencies and health care providers, and understands their perspectives.
Expert Adviser
Gregory Bonk is the president of HMS Associates, a nationally recognized health care consultative services firm specializing in rural health and underserved communities, which he founded in 1990 in suburban Buffalo, NY. HMS has several product lines that include community and provider level health care informatics, program evaluation, health care policy development and technical assistance for sustainable multi-organizational networks and alliances. Greg has personally worked with clients in 22 states and over 80% of these clients have been multi-organizational groups. As a consequence, the firm has extensive national credentials and expertise in working effectively with multi-organizational groups, networks or community consortia through data driven decision-making processes.
Greg has served in clinical, administrative, and policy-making capacities in public and private organizations in health care and behavioral health care. He is the author of several publications on community health needs, rural health network technical assistance, critical access hospital conversion, and capitation and contract negotiation. He holds a Master Degree from Louisiana State University at Monroe in Psychometrics and is an adjunct instructor at the University of Buffalo (State University of New York) School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Greg was the lead evaluator for the USDHHS, Health Resources and Services Administration, Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP), Delta States Rural Development Network Grant Program, 2006 thru 2010 and was the lead consultant on the FORHP project to develop a Manual on Effective Collaboration Between Critical Access Hospitals and Federally Qualified Health Centers, 2010. He is currently revising and updating the Manual for the FORHP and Bureau of Primary Heath Care Services (BPHC) under a subcontract with the University of Chicago.
Recent major projects addressed needs assessment, collaboration and services development in six frontier counties in Kansas for a consortium of philanthropic organizations, needs assessments for a urban and rural region of New York State for the Medicaid Delivery System Redesign Incentive Payment (DSRIP) program for three Performing Provider Systems, and collaborative assessments and strategic planning for rural regions in western New York for philanthropy and in northeast Pennsylvania for a health care system. Examples of assessments are available upon request.
CONTACT ME
Have a particular challenge you’re trying to deal with? Contact me today and let me help you get you back on track!
P O Box 374, Getzville, NY 14068
716-868-6448
716-689-6038