Group Health Cooperative innovates the telephone Consulting Nurse Service in 1970.

See Additional Media
In 1970, Group Health Cooperative innovates the telephone Consulting Nurse Service. The person responsible for innovating this service is nurse Mary Matsuda Greunewald. This will prove to be one of Group Health's most popular and cost-effective programs.

By 1976 the nurse consultants were handling some 10,000 calls a month, and resolving about 6,000 of these contacts without a doctor visit. With the cost of the average call being 56 cents and the cost of the average doctor visit being $25, this service yielded dramatic efficiency.


Sources: Walt Crowley, To Serve the Greatest Number: A History of Group Health Cooperative of Seattle (Seattle: GHC/University of Washington Press, 1995), 138, 154.

Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You