Integrated ambulatory care services in oncology.

In today's medical care environment of cost containment and restricted reimbursement, it is important to maximize the use of expensive facility and personnel resources. Concurrently, it is important to provide superior and timely patient services in order to remain competitive in an extremely flexible market. There are many areas in today's larger hospital environments where such ideals can be easily achieved. One of the more obvious areas is the automation of appointment and resource scheduling for ambulatory care services. This article focuses on maximizing the use of available physical and personnel resources in the ambulatory care setting of large and specialty hospitals. The Johns Hopkins Oncology Center's integrated outpatient scheduling and resource management systems are used as examples of what can be achieved. It is hoped that the experiences of the Oncology Center in developing these integrated systems will help others in similar efforts.

Topics in library technology: copying techniques.

Photocopying applications in the library include the combining of previously separate material, the separation of a single item into two or more of its parts, and the selection of parts of existent material by the use of overlays. The production of catalog cards, the creation of sheet material (new book lists, reference bibliographies) from card-form materials, an Index Medicus-derived alerting service, and overdue notices copied from charge cards are among the applications exemplifying these general types. Larger-scale operations employing microfilm are noted. The distinction between copying and printing, in the light of equipment advances, is discussed.