Evaluation Strategies and Considerations for Rural Mobile Healthcare Programs

Evaluating mobile healthcare programs is essential for understanding their effectiveness, improving outcomes, and ensuring resources are used efficiently to achieve desired goals. While there are many measures and considerations specific to mobile healthcare programs, these general guidelines can be followed.

1. Develop an Evaluation Plan. Develop an evaluation plan prior to the beginning of a mobile healthcare project. Consider what the goals of the program are, which activities will be conducted, anticipated outcomes, potential return on investment, and other factors or questions about the program. Identifying the evaluation focus and approach are the first steps to evaluating a program.
2. Create an Evaluation Design. There are three types of evaluation designs that can be used: experimental (randomly assign participants to the program or a control group), quasi-experimental (compare program group to a similar group), and non-experimental designs (pre- and post- program comparisons with no control group). Program staff may also use process evaluations, impact evaluations, outcome evaluations, performance monitoring, and cost-benefit evaluations to model their evaluation. Knowing the program goals, research questions, and evaluation purpose will help in choosing a design.
3. Collect Evaluation Data. Use surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, progress tracking, pre- and post- secondary data, and program documentation to collect and analyze data in the evaluation.
4. Understand Evaluation Findings. After analyzing collected data, use the findings to demonstrate impact to funders, suggest improvements for continued efforts, seek support for continuing the program, gather information on the approach that can be shared with others, and help determine if an approach would be appropriate to replicate in other locations with similar needs.

Read more about each step in the Rural Community Health Toolkit.

Evaluation Considerations for Mobile Healthcare Programs

When planning and conducting an evaluation, it’s important to consider available resources, staff, funding, available data, and any reporting requirements.

When developing the evaluation plan, identify necessary evaluation measures and how the data will be collected for each measure. Programs should identify how to capture their activities and outcomes most accurately. Using electronic health record (EHR) systems used by other provider organizations in the community can be helpful for data collection. Accessing EHRs also ensures all members of a patient's care team have access to their care plan and treatment records. Data can also be collected through health plans’ enrollment data, patient satisfaction surveys, staff satisfaction surveys, and secondary sources. It’s important to understand what data is accessible when creating and implementing your evaluation.

Funders may have reporting requirements for programs. For example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires data collection for reimbursement for some mobile healthcare programs. Understand what each funding requirement is to integrate that data collection into the evaluation.

Resources to Learn More

So What? Who Cares? How to Ensure Your Evaluation Results Are Useful
Video/Multimedia
Recording of a mobile clinic group meeting that discusses why evaluating programs is important.
Organization(s): Mobile Health Map
Date: 3/2023

Home Health Quality Reporting
Website
Includes an overview of reporting requirements for home health programs receiving reimbursement from CMS.
Organization(s): Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services