The organisation of group practice : a report of a sub-committee of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee.

  • Great Britain. Standing Medical Advisory Committee
Date:
1971
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The organisation of group practice : a report of a sub-committee of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    doctors and nurses work together in groups from the same premises and we discuss the question of the best size of such a group. We then go on to consider the implications of more than one group practising from the same premises and what the advantages and disadvantages may be. In the subsequent chapters we discuss the requirements of group practice in terms of the nurses, social workers, and secretarial staff who will be needed and how they may work as a team. We then go on to detail the premises and organis- ation which this team will require and the need for a new system of combined. records. We discuss the relationship of group practice with the department of the community physician, the hospital service, and a number of other professions with which we think group practice will be associated in a unified health service. Finally, we discuss the place of group practice in the training of doctors and other professional workers, and the need for, and methods of, research into the require- ments of the community and the means of meeting those needs. Implicit in many of our recommendations is the belief that an efficient and economic system of medical care requires functional integration of the hospital and community services. It also demands that in the future greater emphasis and financial priority be placed upon the development of our community services than has been so in the past. Semantic problems have troubled us and we think it wise to define some of the terms we use in our report: Group practice We use this term to describe the general practitioners and nurses who together provide primary and continuing medical care; who share the same equip- ment and secretarial staff and usually the same premises; who provide emer- gency and off-duty cover for each other and with whom, as a group, other specialists in medicine and other professional workers may be associated. Basic unit within a group practice We use this term to describe the sub-group formed by a doctor supported by nurses and secretarial staff, who all relate their work to a defined popu- lation. A number of these basic units group together to form a group practice (defined above). Multiple group practice We use this term to denote a number of group practices (defined above) who work from the same premises. Primary physician The doctor of first contact. Community physician We explain, in Chapter IX, what we think are the functions of the commun- ity physician in relation to group practice. Medicine in the community or community care We use these terms to distinguish medicine cutside the hospital from medicine in the hospital although we accept that the hospital is part of the community. We think these terms more apt descriptions than, for example, domiciliary medicine.
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