Role Of The National Information Infrastructure On Health Care Deliveky In A Resource-constrained Environment

Health Care Reform has been the focus of national attention for the past 2 years. Issues in the forefront of health care delivery which must be solved include the escalating cost of delivering high quality health care, inadequate access to primary and specialty care to segments of both rural and urban America, and the duplication of expensive facilities because of the inability of the infrastructure to enable the sharing of these facilities. Individuals who are geographically distant or residing in inner city neighborhoods of large metropolitan areas have little or no access to the most basic medical care, let alone tertiary care centers. As but a few examples, in some regions seven days are required for a general practitioner to receive an x-ray report from a radiologist, an increasing number of small towns do not have physicians or even physician assistants in residence, and many do not have 9 t I services.