Network Readiness Assessment

Ongoing changes in health care policies and market trends are creating opportunities for community-based integrated care networks (CBICNs) to deliver coordinated and standardized services at greater scales and efficiencies as contract-based partners with health care entities. A CBICN is defined as a group of community-based organizations that are organized and coordinated to deliver community-based services under contract with health care entities at regional, state, or multi-state levels.

Health care entities such as health care provider systems and managed care organizations benefit from contracting with networks of CBOs because networks can cover large geographic areas and offer a single point of contracting and accountability. The Network Readiness Assessment tool is designed to help organizations and groups of organizations gauge their current levels of readiness for building, sustaining, and growing a coordinated network of service providers that contracts with health care entities.

It is recommended that all members of your network’s leadership team review all of the questions in the assessment prior to working together on assessing and scoring the network. Scoring accuracy will be key to making the assessment meaningful to you, which will require time and attention to the details within the questions and scoring guidance. Involving all of the network’s leaders and/or internal stakeholders in the scoring process will improve scoring accuracy and provide valuable and constructive dialogue about your network’s development and growth opportunities. The assessment allows you to answer all the questions at once, or you can leave the assessment and return to it at a later time to complete the remaining questions.

Assessment Structure & Scoring

The Network Readiness Assessment consists of seven modules representing areas that are essential to planning, developing and managing a coordinated network of service providers. Each module consists of a series of questions focused on practices, processes, and infrastructure that networks seeking to build health care partnerships should consider. Each question has specific scoring guidance based on the following 1-4 scoring scale:

1 = Not Started
2 = Beginning
3 = Intermediate
4 = Advanced

Users should carefully review the scoring guidance for each question prior to assigning a whole-number score (1, 2, 3, or 4) that most accurately reflects the network’s current status in that particular area. The scores within each module are averaged to provide a score for each module; the scores across the entire tool are also averaged to provide users with an overall score for their network. The tool is designed to accommodate very early stage networks as well as those that are more established and advanced.

To access the assessment tools, please log in or create an account*.

*Creating an account allows you to begin the Readiness Assessment, pause and return to complete it later.