The quality and cost of medical care. The potential for information technology to meet the challenge.

The rising cost of health care has precipitated a variety of cost containment initiatives. With the accelerated transition to managed care, the question of quality has emerged. The feeling of many is that cost reduction alone can have only one effect, a reduction in quality. In response, many have focused on the need to reassess and reengineer the processes involved in the delivery of care and to integrate these processes to ensure better management of the patient through the monitoring of the continuum of care. In this paper, we describe the potential for the application of an information technology, known as workflow management technology, in the design and control of health care delivery processes.