Information technology enters the doctor's office: Part I--Six design and implementation lessons.

Because of a trend toward increased cost escalation outside of the hospital, in the ambulatory care setting, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company initiated an Ambulatory Utilization Review ("AUR") program in 1986. This is an overview of the lessons learned since that time. Some of what was learned was simply--or not so simply--"how to," the subject of this first article in a two-part series. Once this deceptively difficult technology was understood, there were two additional categories of lessons to learn: the extent of expected program results and some unexpected results. This second set of lessons is reviewed in Part II of the article.