BMJ 1995;311:1438 (25 November)

Letters

Cost of employing general practitioners in department may outweigh savings

EDITOR,--Jeremy Dale and colleagues state that important benefits in terms of resource allocation might result if general practitioners were employed in accident and emergency departments to manage patients with "primary care" type problems.1 Although this may be the case at King's College Hospital, where the rate of patients attending with such problems is 41%, in areas of Britain with lower primary care attendance rates the cost of employing general practitioners might outweigh any savings from reductions in investigations.

The accident and emergency department at the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton, is in an inner city area and sees roughly 76000 new patients a year. A prospective study was undertaken between 12 July 1993 and 19 September 1993 to determine the size and epidemiology of the primary care problem. Primary care patients were defined as those whose condition could best be managed by a general practitioner (for example, those with ear or throat . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Primary care in the accident and emergency department: II. comparison of general practitioners and hospital doctors
Jeremy Dale, Judith Green, Fiona Reid, Edward Glucksman, and Roger Higgs
BMJ 1995 311: 427-430. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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