Unmet Need for Medical Care

INCREASING amounts of money and effort are being expended on the organization and provision of medical services, as well as on research and professional education. Practicing physicians, hospital, medical-care and public-health administrators, as well as many other groups, are deeply absorbed in the day-to-day task of meeting medical-care needs. Nevertheless, there are few yardsticks for measuring how effective these efforts are in terms of the potentialities of medicine. The possible value of such yardsticks in maintaining and improving standards of service seem self-evident.This report is based on a series of three studies designed to measure the distribution of unmet . . .