ABSTRACT
The large-scale delivery of virtually any set of health services requires the organization of a number of discrete activities into a system. A health delivery system includes interrelated functions such as training, supervision, logistics, and the collection of information. To the extent that a legitimate role for Operations Research (OR) in primary health care (PHC) programs becomes widely accepted, the direct contribution of outside experts to a given program will necessarily be small, on the average. A number of considerations provide grounds for optimism that most OR programs will produce overall improvements in the cost-effectiveness of service delivery. Since the design of most PHC delivery system components is intuitive, it is likely that there are more cost-effective alternatives that can be discovered through empirical testing, and the effect of these improvements is cumulative over time.
