King County Healthcare Coalition
Public Health - Seattle & King County (PHSKC) wanted to clearly demonstrate the outcomes of their efforts invested in the King County Healthcare Coalition. NWCPHP partnered on this important program evaluation project and in the fall of 2009 PHSKC received a comprehensive evaluation report.
On September 27, 2007, PHSKC and NWCPHP partnered to write a grant to evaluate the King County Healthcare Coalition. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), announced the award of a health care facilities partnership program grant to the King County Healthcare Coalition, 
one of 11 lead recipients of partnership program grant awards through a competitive application process. This grant supported the King County Healthcare Coalition to conduct seven projects to further its vision of a "coordinated response across the continuum of healthcare that meets the health and medical needs of the community during an emergency and an evaluation of King County Healthcare Coalition."
It was this funding that allowed the King County Healthcare Coalition, via PHSKC, to contract with NWCPHP to conduct an evaluation of the seven projects, as well as an overall program evaluation of the King County Healthcare Coalition. NWCPHP finished the evaluation of these projects in the fall of 2009.
Some of the key activities include:
- Evaluating Business Resilency Workshops: Project 3 was designed to enhance non-hospital agencies understanding of their role and strengthen their capacity in an emergency or disaster. Specifically, the project focused on long-term care (nursing homes, boarding homes, adult family homes, home health, and home care), mental health, substance abuse, pediatric, ambulatory care, palliative care, and other specialty service providers (e.g. dialysis providers, blood centers, poison center, surgical centers). The project provided training, tools and techniques for assessing gaps in preparedness and supported agency planning through enhancement grants, continuity of operations workshops, technical assistance, and guidance on sustaining operations and services during an emergency response. NWCPHP worked with PHSKC to develop project monitoring spreadsheets, business resiliency assessment tool and final reorting tools and conducted pre post evaluations of business resiliency workshops.
- Regional Healthcare Worker Survey: The goal of the Regional Healthcare Worker Survey provided an assessment of the ability and willingness of healthcare workers in King County to report to work during a public health emergency such as an influenza pandemic or a severe earthquake.
The data from this study provide valuable information that can help inform both regional and organizational emergency preparedness and response planning. Specifically, these findings highlight topics for consideration regarding organizational and regional strategies related to staffing and staff redeployment, transportation management, training, and prophylaxis and treatment of healthcare workers and their families and regional response activities such as operating alternate care facilities or call centers. - Overall Evaluation of King County Healthcare Coalition: As part of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Healthcare Facilities Partnership program, the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice (NWCPHP) collaborated with the King County Healthcare Coalition and Public Health - Seattle & King County to conduct key informant interviews with government leadership and Coalition executives, members, and staff during the months of February, March, April, 2008. Two major areas of focus of the Coalition since November 2005 have been: 1) building an infrastructure to support a coordinated, regional emergency response across the health system; and 2) assisting health care organizations in strengthening continuity of operations in the event of an emergency. The questions the evaluation sought to answer addressed the extent to which the Coalition has made a contribution in these two areas, and the extent to which the exercises and technical support provided have contributed to capacity building. Additionally, the evaluation sought to identify factors or actions that would help ensure the Coalition’s effectiveness and sustainability and lessons learned from the King County experience that might be of value to others engaged in this work. Structured interviews were conducted with 32 key informants representing four groups: government leaders, healthcare leaders, Coalition members/operational representatives, and Coalition and Public Health staff. Data from the interviews are currently being aggregated and qualitative analyses performed to identify themes and patterns of responses. Below are the preliminary emerging themes:
- Government leadership described the Coalition’s role as “critical” “very important” a “linchpin” in emergency preparedness among healthcare agencies and providers.
- Regional Medical Resource Center (RMRC), KCHealthTrac, drills and training were consistently mention across all four groups as the most important contributions to date.
- Building relationships, particularly in pre event planning for catastrophic events, between medical and non-medical agencies has been a positive outcome.
- The value added to organizations has been the Coalition’s convening role and the clarification of roles and responsibilities in a “system” of emergency response.
- Among the most convincing evidence to date of Coalition effectiveness mentioned was the response to the 2006 windstorm where an alternate care facility was quickly put into place.
- Across the four groups, informants described the need for ongoing sustainable funding with less reliance on federal grants.
- Suggestions for improving effectiveness include strengthening strategic planning and coordination among, local, state, and regional and national levels.
- Healthcare Coalition Self-Assessment Survey: The Healthcare Coalition Self-Assessment Survey was based on the Partnership Self-Assessment Tool , which was designed to help partnerships understand how well the collaborative process is working, and identify specific areas of improvement. The HCC Self-Assessment Survey was administered electronically using Survey Monkey, which is a Web-based survey tool.
