Design and Methods for the Community Tracking Study
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. The community-based design was replaced by a national
sample design for the 2007 Household and 2008 Physician Survey, although site
visits continue to be focused on the 12 communities. Because the latest samples
are no longer clustered in communities, the surveys have been renamed to HSC
Health Tracking Household and Physician surveys. The 2007 Household and 2008
physician surveys support analyses at the national level only.
Finding Additional Information. Additional information about the design
and methods of the HSC surveys can be found in HSC
Technical Publications.
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