An Information System for Community Health Services Planning and Management

One response to the crisis on the American health care scene has been the formation of new kinds of organizations to deliver care on a more cost-effective and equitable basis. Due to the added responsibilities of delivering truly comprehensive medical care while being held accountable to the populations they serve, these new organizations face the challenge of developing management information systems vastly different from those used in the past. This paper describes an innovative management information system now being used by a rural community-owned health service. The system integrates financial, demographic and health service utilization data with a general-purpose processing method to provide planning and management information for administrators, a medical director and a community board of directors. Examples of management uses of the information system are discussed.