This book describes the results of a community survey designed to evaluate the impact of a hospital/medical staff effort to set up primary care centers. The specific impact to be assessed was whether these innovative efforts increased access to medical care for the populations surveyed.
The evaluation project, like the demonstration project itself, was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and was carried out by a veteran team of health services researchers from the University of Chicago (Aday et al). The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation had previously provided a grant to these researchers to develop an approach to measuring access to medical care (1973) and to design and conduct a national survey to implement their conceptual approach.
The timing of the publication is of interest, in that the original Community Hospital/Medical Staff-Sponsored Group Practice Program was funded in 1974, by awards of $30 million to about 60 community hospitals.