Letters
General practitioners are not as beleaguered as they were
EDITOR,--In their editorial on the nature of general practice Per Fugelli and Iona Heath describe the values that they believe should inform the way in which general practitioners work.1 They are correct to draw attention to the central importance of family doctors' long term knowledge of their patients and their role as gatekeepers, but their assertion that general practitioners can walk away from the implications of managerial change in the NHS is questionable.
Fugelli and Heath perpetuate the myth that fundholding general practitioners are concerned primarily with their own power and ambition. They go on to say that the emphasis of gatekeeping has shifted from the interests of individual patients to those of the general population and, by implication, those of taxpayers. Nowhere do they cite any evidence to support these propositions. Finite resources have to be allocated to meet ever increasing demands and needs. The purpose of fundholding is
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- The nature of general practice
- Per Fugelli and Iona Heath
BMJ 1996 312: 456-457.[Extract] [Full Text]
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