Comprehensive Health Care Center Research Articles

Computer Support for a Neighborhood Health Clinic: Design and Implementation

Neighborhood comprehensive health care centers have become an important model of health care delivery in large metropolitan areas. Constraints in manpower resources dictate the need to explore ways and means by which computer technology can support the activity of health professionals in these centers. The Department of Community Medicine at Baylor has designed and is in the process of implementing a computer support system for a neighborhood health clinic, Casa de Amigos, of the Harris County Hospital District.

Trends in health care delivery. Where do they lead?

There is a growing coalescence of preventive and curative services, of in-patient and ambulatory services and of diversified specialist services, all tending to be financed increasingly from single comprehensive funding mechanisms. There is also an increasing tendency to view the totality of health care facilities as a single community resource, with “community” crossing traditional governmental boundaries as one views efforts in health planning. These forces tend to indicate a new means of organization of health services and a new role for official health agencies. One possible organizational pattern is described, resulting in decentralizing those services of a personal nature to community-based comprehensive health care centers which would deliver the totality of services on a coordinated basis, leaving to central health authorities the functions of health surveillance, planning and resource allocation, standard setting and environmental protection.