Primary Care

Since the recent fundamental changes in the organisation of primary care, the management of a GPs practice has become more complex, more controversial, and more time consuming. This book discusses the way ahead for these major issues, including funding, commissioning, patient priorities, and gate-keeping Contributors.

Preface.

1 Primary Care: The Core Values. (Ian R. McWhinney).

2 Patient-centred Primary Care. (Les Toop).

3 Contracting for General Practice: Another Turn of the Wheel of History. (Brian M. Goss).

4 Developing Prim ary Care: Gatekeeping, Commissioning, and Manged Care. ( Jennifer Dixon, Peter Holland and Nicholas Mays).

5 Primary Care in an Imperfect Market. (John Roberts).

6 Patients Priorities. (Rabbi Julia Neuberger).

7 Evidence and General Practic Care. ( Chris Van Weel).

8 From Education and Training to Professional Development. (Jacky Hayden).

9 Primary Care, Health and the Good Society. (Iona Heath).

Index.

Mike Pringle is the author of Primary Care: Core Values, published by Wiley. "In the dark days it has been all too easy to lose faith in the core value of primary care. But they have survived because they are robust and are right."

Primary care today plays a greater role than ever before in providing a healthy environment for society. But how can primary care workers deliver optimum individual care to patients within the constraints of ever growing expectations and dwindling resources?

This is the central theme of Primary Care: Core Values in which outstanding thinkers in health care take on the key areas of concern for primary care at the end of the century.

Topics include:

Identifying the core values; patient centered care; contracting; developing primary care gatekeeping; primary care in an imperfect market; patient priorities; evidence and general practice primary care; education; training and professional development; primary care in the good society.

In looking backward and forward, the book provides a rounded picture of what primary care has always stood for and for how its aims can still be achieved in the 21st century. All those involved in both delivering and managing it will find the discussion here an encapsulation of what profession should be striving for.