| Research Questions | Primary Data Type | Description of Data | Data Collection Process |
|---|---|---|---|
| How do the ACT practices make the changes required to integrate care for patients? | Documents | Documents include grant applications, reports to TCHF, E-mail communications, innovator presentations, and documents from innovators (scheduling templates, educational materials). | Documents are collected throughout the study period and during observation visits. The Program Office and grantees share documents freely. |
| What factors enable and impede efforts to integrate care for patients, with particular attention to teamwork, information exchange, and shared decision making? | Online diaries | Members from each innovation team report their implementations experiences biweekly via an online journal that is shared with other members of their team and the evaluation team. | The evaluation team identified 5 to 7 people on each grantee team, including practice members, to post diary entries. Each team has a private online diary room. Diary keepers were asked to post every 2 weeks. Evaluators interact with diary keepers to encourage posting. |
| Observation visits | Two-day visits with each innovation site to observe care delivery. | During visits, 2 to 3 evaluators observed the care delivery process by shadowing clinicians, clinical support staff, and nonclinical support staff. This included observing huddles and other team meetings. | |
| Interviews | Informal and semistructured interviews are conducted with the innovators, clinic members, and eventually patients. | The evaluation team has informal discussions with innovators during meetings convened by the Program Office. In addition, we conduct semistructured interviews with 8 to 10 practice members during observation visits. | |
| Survey | A survey was completed by each innovation team to collect information about each organization (eg, ownership, staffing patterns, turnover, panel characteristics). | The evaluation team distributed surveys to one person at each ACT innovation site who worked with members of the practice to complete the information. Information was returned to us and data reviewed. Questions were clarified with teams as needed. |
TCHF, The Colorado Health Foundation.