The cornerstone of Labour's 'New NHS': reforming primary care

Karen Bloor (), Alan Maynard and Andrew Street
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Karen Bloor: Centre for Health Economics, The University of York

No 168chedp, Working Papers from Centre for Health Economics, University of York

Abstract: Two remarkable aspects of the Thatcher ‘internal market’ reforms of the NHS were the focus on creating a market for hospital services and the way in which primary care was treated almost peripherally in the 1989 White Paper (Department of Health 1989a). The 1991 NHS reforms introduced general practitioner (GP) fundholding almost as an afterthought, and the revision of the GP contract in 1990 Paper (Department of Health 1989b) was conducted separately from the implementation of other health care reforms. In contrast the principal focus of Labour’s ‘new NHS’ reform is primary care (Department of Health 1997). The intention of the government is both to improve the efficiency and equity of primary care provision and to develop Primary Care Groups and Primary Care Trusts which both provide care efficiently and act as agents who purchase secondary and tertiary care on behalf of patients. This is an ambitious agenda. This paper explores the policy context of Primary Care Groups in sections 1 and 2, describes and appraises the government proposals in section 3, and identifies major issues involved in the implementation of change in section 4.

Keywords: fundholding; rationing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 1999-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://www.york.ac.uk/media/che/documents/papers/d ... on%20Paper%20168.pdf First version, 1999 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chy:respap:168chedp

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