Total purchasing is not yet total

Several pilot projects are underway in Britain to assess the concept of "total purchasing" of health services by general practitioners. These extend existing fundholding schemes and allow groups of general practitioners to hold larger budgets and purchase a wider range of secondary and community services for their patients. On p 652 Mays et al assess the pilots; these showed wide variation in the scope and ways of working. Most of the 53 pilots are in suburban or rural areas; they showed a range of management costs, from £0.26 per head to £8.05 with a mean of £3.00. The authors conclude that the NHS is likely to be organised around GP purchasing in future but that several issues remain to be resolved.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Student BMJ

Risk of surgery for inflammatory bowel disease: record linkage studies

What can you learn from this BMJ paper? Read Leanne Tite's Paper+

www.student.bmj.com

Listen to the latest BMJ Interview