An Application of Decision Modeling to Indian Health Care

Despite advances in medical science, the delivery of health care to Indians in remote reservation areas remains a problem. Fortunately, a potential solution has appeared from an unusual source: a NASA method for delivering medical services by using state-of-the-art telecommunications in lieu of conventional face-to-face clinical services. Telemedicine did, in fact, improve health conditions for the Papago tribe in southern Arizona. Consequently, the Indian Health Service (IHS) of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, obtained a new tool whereby health care delivery might be improved on all reservations. Perhaps equally important, the IHS was able to utilize industrial mathematical decision-modeling techniques to select from among alternative health care delivery systems for each reservation.