Health-Services Information Systems in the United States Today

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Abstract
Health-services Information systems are defined as those whose primary purpose is to provide intelligence for use in decision making by organizations and individuals responsible for personal health care. Substantial progress has been made in the United States in certain fields like national base-line statistics and hospital-discharge abstract systems, and there is new interest in systems for ambulatory care, in Cooperative systems covering state and metropolitan areas, and in the development of common terminology. In general, however, demand for information far exceeds supply. Professional standards review organizations, for example, will lack information for establishing norms and profiles of care, and for evaluating medical services in the larger perspective of individual and community needs and long-term consequences. The most pervasive weakness remains fragmentation of sources and systems at all levels, paralleling the dispersion of responsibility and accountability for health services. (N Engl J Med 290:603–610, 1974)