A promising approach to achieving this linkage is community-based performance measurement — reporting and acting on clinical performance measures at the community level, rather than at the level of delivery-system units such as hospitals or physicians. Using this measurement approach, a delivery system can gain a better sense of where its patient population clusters within communities and how their environment affects their health outcomes. The strategy for addressing patients' needs follows from these analyses; it entails identification of patients residing in communities where quality of care and outcomes are notably unsatisfactory, identification of promising approaches for patients in those communities, and integration of these approaches into the care plans of patients from those communities who receive their care in the health system.