Monitoring Market Change: Findings from the Community Tracking Study:

The Community Tracking Study Analyses of Market Change: Introduction

April 2000
Health Services Research , vol.35, no.1, Part 1 (April 2000): 7-16
Paul B. Ginsburg, Peter Kemper, Raymond J. Baxter, Linda T. Kohn

his essay introduces and describes the research methodology common to two articles that report on a systematic study of health system change based on site visits to a national cross-section of U.S. cities. As part of the Community Tracking Study, researchers visited 12 metropolitan statistical areas with populations over 200,000 and conducted from 36 to 60 in-person interviews with leaders of organizations involved in the financing and delivery of health care. The interviews were conducted in 1996 and 1997. Interview modules were designed to obtain multiple perspectives on a question, and the communities were compared to identify common patterns of change and differences across communities. Researchers found that fundamental changes in the way care is actually delivered is likely to lag behind the extensive changes in organizational relationships that are taking place.

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