The costs involved in running a fully computerized primary care system for a district

In 1971 Exeter Community Health Services Computer Project (ECHSCP) embarked upon a scheme to produce a fully integrated patient record system. By 1975 many of its original objectives had been achieved and systems were operational in the areas of hospital administration, nursing records for patients and in primary care. The primary care system enabled general practitioners to dispense with the previously maintained manual record and replace it with a computer-based system, with the GP entering and retrieving data from a terminal located in his own surgery. Because of its original research nature, the ECHSCP has only implemented the full system in two health centres with respectively five and seven GPs in each. The computer system could provide the service on a District-wide basis serving a population of around 285 000 patients. This paper identifies the present costs of the system and uses them to extrapolate and estimate the costs per patient in running a fully computerized District-based primary care system, on equipment ordered originally in 1971 but still operational in 1980.