Pahrump Community Health Needs Assessment results “no surprise”

Following a two-month-long survey period that probed residents’ feelings about the state of health care in the local community, the results are as many would have expected. Key concerns for those who call Pahrump and the surrounding areas home include the difficulty of finding primary care providers, the often lengthy wait to see a doctor, the need for additional medical specialists and much more.

Every few years, the University of Nevada Reno School of Medicine’s Office of Statewide Initiatives partners with Desert View Hospital (DVH) on this Community Health Needs Assessment Survey. DVH Marketing and Outreach Coordinator Ryan Muccio explained that DVH facilitates the assessment but the data points included are not all specific to the hospital. Instead, the assessment is a broad snapshot of the community as a whole.

“The purpose is to get a pulse on the community and see if there are changes in the needs, and then feed that data to other organizations and entities that could potentially help solve some of these issues,” Muccio detailed.

For the 2024/2025 survey, Muccio said the results of the assessment were far from surprising, illustrating longstanding needs that continue to plague the area.

“While the population in Pahrump and surrounding areas has certainly changed since the last survey - which we did before the pandemic - a lot of the data didn’t,” Muccio told the Pahrump Valley Times. “The big takeaways are, of course, lack of primary care providers and then, lack of access to providers in a reasonable amount of time – even if you do have a primary care provider, sometimes getting in to see them can be two or three months. But again, that is something we have seen in every survey we’ve done.”

The survey consisted of 29 questions on an array of topics that can affect health, such as medical care, housing and food insecurity. When it comes to the top three health needs faced by residents, access to health care, inadequate services for seniors and cost of health care, at a rate of 45.9%, 32% and 25.5%, respectively. Other top needs included transportation to health care and human services, mental illness and lack of affordable housing.

In response to the question, “In your opinion, what is the principal barrier you face in accessing health care in our community?,” 40.2% said primary health care doctors and other health providers are not available in a timely manner or are simply not accepting new patients.

Overall, 55.6% of survey respondents rate the health of the community as “unhealthy” while just 33.1% believe it is “healthy.” Almost 10% of those surveyed marked the community as “very unhealthy.”

So now that the Community Health Needs Assessment Survey has been compiled into a formal report, to what purpose will this data be put?

As a for-profit critical-access hospital, DVH is not required to conduct the survey but the company does anyway, with the aim of strengthening the health and well-being of the entire population, Muccio said. Entities such as state agencies, the Legislature, local governments, nonprofits and more can all access the report and utilize the information.

“This assessment is an opportunity to collect data for other agencies. It may not particularly pertain to the hospital but if it’s important in the community, we want to help gather that data,” Muccio said. “For instance – food insecurity. That’s not something we can solve at the hospital level, but it’s an identified need someone else might be able to address. This data can be used by many different organizations for a variety of reasons.”

The full Community Health Needs Assessment report can be viewed at DesertViewHospital.com/about-us/resources/ and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com