Design and Methods for the Community Tracking Study

	Data Files
	Design and Methods
	Household Survey
	Physician Survey
	Site Visits
	Followback Survey
	Employer Survey
	Status of CTS
	Section Map

The Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) documents changes in health care systems over time and tracks the effects of those changes on people. Through surveys and site visits, HSC seeks to describe and analyze how the interactions of providers, insurers, policy makers and others determine the accessibility, cost, and quality of locally delivered health care. The core of these efforts is HSC's Community Tracking Study (CTS), a set of periodic surveys and site visits that have allowed researchers to analyze information about local markets and the nation as a whole. Because health care delivery is primarily local, both the surveys and site visits are centered around communities in the U.S. In addition, because the focus of the CTS is on change as well as communities, the study is longitudinal. During the first four rounds, the survey samples were concentrated in 60 communities that were randomly selected to provide a representative profile of change across the U.S. Among these communities, 48 are "large" metropolitan areas (with populations greater than 200,000), from which 12 communities were randomly selected to be studied in depth. Those 12 communities have larger survey samples and also comprise the communities used for the site visits. In the latest round of the Household and Physician Surveys, the design has been modified to permit national estimates only.

Finding Additional Information. Additional information about the design and methods of the CTS surveys can be found in HSC Technical Publications.