DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03267.v3
title: Community Tracking Study Physician Survey, 1998-1999: [United States]
title: Version 3

description: This study comprises the second round of the physician survey component of the Community Tracking Study (CTS) sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The CTS is a national study
designed to track changes in the American health care system and the effects of
the changes on care delivery and on individuals. Central to the design
of the CTS is its community focus. Sixty sites (51 metropolitan areas
and 9 nonmetropolitan areas) were randomly selected to form the core
of the CTS and to be representative of the nation as a whole. As in
the first round of the physician survey (COMMUNITY TRACKING STUDY
PHYSICIAN SURVEY, 1996-1997: [UNITED STATES] (ICPSR 2597)), the second
round was administered to physicians in the 60 CTS sites and to a
supplemental national sample of physicians. The survey instrument
collected information on physician supply and specialty distribution,
practice arrangements and physician ownership of practices, physician
time allocation, sources of practice revenue, level and determinants
of physician compensation, provision of charity care, career
satisfaction, physicians' perceptions of their ability to deliver
care, views on care management strategies, and various other aspects of physicians' practice of medicine. In addition, primary care
physicians (PCPs) were asked to recommend courses of action in response to some vignettes of clinical presentations for which there was no prescribed method of treatment.


Dataset 3, the Site and County Crosswalk Data File, identifies the counties that constitute each CTS site.


Dataset 4, the Physician Survey Summary File, contains site-level estimates and standard errors of the estimates for selected physician characteristics, e.g., the percentage of physicians who were foreign medical school graduates, the mean age of physicians, and the mean percentage of patient care practice revenue from Medicaid.
description: The CTS sites were selected using stratified sampling with
probability proportional to population size. The supplemental sample, which was selected using stratified random sampling, was included in the survey in order to increase the precision of national estimates. The sample frame was developed by combining lists of physicians from the American Medical Association and the American Osteopathic Association. For both the site and supplemental samples, the sampling design involved
randomly selecting physicians who were part of the Round 1 survey and physicians who were not covered by Round 1. Thus, about 58 percent of the Round 2 respondents also participated in Round 1. PCPs were oversampled in the site sample.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Public-Use Version of the Main Data File
DS2: Restricted-Use Version of the Main Data File
DS3: Site and County Crosswalk Data File
DS4: Physician Survey Summary File
description: Physicians practicing in the 48 states of the contiguous
United States who provided direct patient care for at least 20 hours per week and were not federal employees, specialists in fields in which the primary focus was not direct patient care, or graduates of foreign medical schools who were only temporarily licensed to practice
in the United States. Residents, interns, and fellows were excluded.
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)For additional information about this study see the Web site of the Center for Studying Health System Change.