The UK health minister, Mr Alan Milburn, has announced that 94 personal medical services pilot schemes will begin in April 1998.

The NHS (Primary Care) Act 1997 provided for GPs to become salaried or form one stop shops for local primary and community health services. The pilots focus on three areas of patient need: attracting more GPs to areas where there are recruitment problems; getting GPs and community nurses to work more closely together; and tackling inequalities and health problems of deprivation.

There will be a nurse led pilot in Tower Hamlets in east London which will focus on the needs of homeless people, with a salaried GP and an experienced nurse providing primary medical services. A pilot in south Lancashire will provide primary health care by a partnership between a GP and a nurse clinician with joint responsibility for running a single practice unit. In Maryport in Cumbria the local practice will take over the day to day management of …