Insurance Coverage & Costs
Access to Care
Quality & Care Delivery
Health Care Markets
Employers/Consumers
Health Plans
Hospitals
Physicians
Issue Briefs
Data Bulletins
Research Briefs
Policy Analyses
Community Reports
Journal Articles
Other Publications
Surveys
Site Visits
Design and Methods
Data Files
Introduction to the Community Reports
Compilation of Round Two Site Visits
Summer 1999
he American health system is undergoing dramatic and far-reaching change. Employers and government programs are demanding cost control, consumers are pressing for greater choice and access and policy makers are urging that quality assurance and patient protections be put in place. Simultaneously, health care organizations are reconfiguring through mergers and acquisitions, experimenting with new types of payment arrangements and expanding into new lines of business. Anecdotal information about these developments abounds, but there is little systematic tracking of these changes or objective analysis of their implications for consumers.
The Community Reports collected here (listed in alphabetical order) represent recent work by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) to help fill this information gap. As part of HSC’s mission to provide objective information about how the health system is changing, researchers conduct site visits every two years to 12 nationally representative communities. Through intensive interviews with local health system leaders, HSC collects data that allow researchers to describe and analyze how health systems are changing both locally and nationally. This work occurs alongside extensive, biannual surveys of consumers, physicians and employers in these and 48 other communities that provide further insight into the impact of health system change on consumers, both locally and nationally.
Why read the Community Reports?The Community Reports or a complete list of all HSC publications.
