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The article examines abstracts of papers submitted but not included in the program of the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Medical Care Section, 1962. Some of these are "Experiences and Activities at a Medical Computing Center," by L.D. Cady, M.A. Woodbury, and L.J. Tich and "An Internist's Experiences With Medical Care of Welfare Patients in Proprietary Nursing Homes," by Sidney M. Greenberg. The first abstract focuses on the center that is cooperating with investigators in the area of mathematical and theoretical analysis and statistical data handling and analysis, information coding, keypunching and storage of medical data for further study and retrieval. The second abstract contains observations of the medical, nursing, and administrative practices in four nursing homes as made by an internist responsible for the medical Scare of welfare patients in these homes. In evaluating these activities the recognition and meeting of the patient's total needs was utilized as the criterion of quality of performance.

The article presents information about this special "Medical Care Issue," which presents reports of several specific programs that illustrate contributory streams in this larger movement of medical care organization. The variety in the movement derives from locality as well as content. One report in this issue comes from the Appalachian coalfields, where new forms of consumer-sponsored prepaid group medical practice are evolving. Another comes from the nation's capital, where a long established health insurance plan has added drugs to its benefits. Another comes from New York City, where organized "home care" has been explored, for the first time as a feature of hospitalization insurance. Another comes from Southern California, where efforts are being made to up-grade the quality of nursing homes. Another comes from a college town in Kentucky, where a great new medical center is being established. Two papers of generic orientation are then presented: one is on the economic characteristics of health services and how they differ from other services or commodities. The final paper offers a review of sociological research conducted on the organization of medical care over the years.