Improved Medical Care Statistics and the Health Services System

Abstract

THE NOTION that a physician suggest to a group of statisticians what they should do may seem strange, but it is not new.The precedent was set by the physician who founded the field of vital statistics, William Farr.How¬ ever, Farr did not ask the first important ques¬ tion in vital statistics.When the English Gov¬ ernment introduced the Registration Bill in 1839, it was proposed to record only the event of death.Edwin Chadwick, the lawyer who founded the public health movement, saw that this exercise was without redeeming social, scientific, or medical merit, and he insisted that the record also indicate the cause of death so that physicians could know how to direct ef¬ forts at improving the health of the people (1).