Community Health Teams: a qualitative study about the factors influencing the decision-making process

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to explore the factors influencing how individual Community Health Teams (CHTs) make decisions about what services to offer and how to allocate their resources. METHODS: We conducted thirteen semi-structured interviews with all 13 CHTs program managers between January and March, 2021. We analyzed interviewees descriptions of their service offerings, resources allocation, and decision-making process to identify themes. RESULTS: Four major themes emerged from the interview data as factors influencing community health team program managers’ decision-making process: commitment to offering high-quality care coordination, Blueprint’s stable and flexible structure, use of data in priority setting, and leveraging community partnerships and local resources. CONCLUSIONS: Community-based CHTs with flexible funding allowed programs to tailor service offerings in response to community needs. It is important for teams to have access to community-level data. Teams are cultivating and leveraging community partners to increase their care coordination capacity, which is focus of their work. CHTs are a model for leveraging community partnerships to increase service capacity and pubic engagement in health services for other states to replicate.