ABSTRACT A health care system provides accessible medical records, the prescription of appropriate medicines, the proper dispensing of medicines to the correct and authorized patients, and the billing for services and products delivered. The system preferably includes an inventory control for medicines to be dispensed. Users are provided with unique identification, for example in the form of machine readable cards. The identification carries information necessary to ensure that the patient and the identification used correspond, for example photographs, fingerprint data, etc.. Presentation of this identification to either the medical practitioner or the pharmacy will provide access to the relevant patient information. for a doctor this will be the patient' s medical history and for the pharmacy a record of the prescriptions to be filled. The system includes a medical prescription issuing system including patient records, including recording the medical records of plural patients, and prescription verification means for comparing a newly recorded prescription with the medical records of the patient to whom the prescription was issued an alert system generates an alert in response to a detected incompatibility between an issued prescription and the medical records of the patient to whom the prescription was issued. The system also includes a medicine dispensing system for recording issued prescriptions and patient data necessary to dispense medicines according to the issued prescriptions. A dispensing mechanism dispenses the prescribed medicine. The system may be integrated with an inventory control and ordering subsystem for prescription drugs.