LINKING RESOURCE USE TO CONSUMER LEVEL OF NEED - FIELD-TEST OF THE LEVEL OF NEED-CARE ASSESSMENT (LONCA) METHOD

A team of service system planners in King County, Washington, field-te sted the feasibility of the LONCA (level of need-care assessment) meth od as a strategy to match resources to consumer level of need. LONCA l inks resources to need by first measuring the incidence and intensity of consumer needs in specific functioning domains. It then preliminari ly specifies the type and intensity of services required to minimally but appropriately address specific consumer needs, calculates service costs, and identifies clusters of consumers with similar need and cost profiles. The field test supported the feasibility of performing LONC A tasks. The resulting scheme for clustering consumers appeared to hav e face validity and was modestly associated with at least 3 independen t indicators of resource need: program status, residential status, and hospitalizations. Despite its limitations, the article supports furth er development of LONCA for use as a resource allocation tool for loca l service systems.