The message will be in the patient's receipt as New Brunswick prepares high-tech information system

An effort to make the public appreciate the real cost of medical services has led to the development of an extensive medical-information and billing system in New Brunswick that uses a personal-information card. Likened to a credit card with unlimited credit, each has a magnetic strip with essential personal information with which to feed a province-wide computer system that eventually will link medicare, patients, doctors, prescription-drug programs and hospitals. The province hopes to have a pilot project running by year's end and then to introduce the system region by region.