Central service as a clinical department.

Central service is a viable, moving, dynamic area that provides service and expertise in finance, production, and clinical care. To recognize and understand its financial and production-based aspects and yet ignore the clinical aspects is to operate ineffectively. Clinical application of the central service area is an operational imperative for materiel management. It is a vehicle for direct participation in clinical care, and it should be developed extensively. By advocating central service as a clinical area, materiel management becomes an integral, clinical part of health care provision.