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Before 1948, general practitioners in Britain settled where they could make a living. Patients fell into two main groups: weekly wage earners, who were compulsorily insured, were on a doctor’s “panel” and were given free medical attention (for which the doctor was paid quarterly by the government); most of the remainder paid the doctor a fee for service at the time of the illness. In 1948 the National Health Service began operation. Under its provisions, everyone is entitled to free medical attention with a general practitioner with whom he is registered. Though general practitioners in the National Health Service are not debarred from also having private patients, these must be people who are not registered with them under the National Health Service. Any physician is free to work as a general practitioner entirely independent of the National Health Service, though there are few who do so. Almost the entire population is registered with a National Health Service general practitioner, and the vast majority automatically sees this physician, or one of his partners, when they require medical attention. A few people, mostly wealthy, while registered with a National Health Service general practitioner, regularly see another physician privately; and a few may occasionally seek a private consultation because they are dissatisfied with their National Health Service physician.
A general practitioner under the National Health Service remains an independent contractor, paid by a capitation fee; that is, according to the number of people registered with him. He may work entirely from his own office, and he provides and pays his own receptionist, secretary, and other ancillary staff. Most general practitioners have one or more partners and work more and more in premises built for the purpose. Some of these structures are erected by the physicians themselves, but many are provided by the local authority, the physicians paying rent for using them. Health centres, in which groups of general practitioners work have become common.
In Britain only a small minority of general practitioners can admit patients to a hospital and look after them personally. Most of this minority are in country districts, where, before the days of the National Health Service, there were cottage hospitals run by general practitioners; many of these hospitals continued to function in a similar manner. All general practitioners use such hospital facilities as X-ray departments and laboratories, and many general practitioners work in hospitals in emergency rooms (casualty departments) or as clinical assistants to consultants, or specialists.
General practitioners are spread more evenly over the country than formerly, when there were many in the richer areas and few in the industrial towns. The maximum allowed list of National Health Service patients per doctor is 3,500; the average is about 2,500. Patients have free choice of the physician with whom they register, with the proviso that they cannot be accepted by one who already has a full list and that a physician can refuse to accept them (though such refusals are rare). In remote rural places there may be only one physician within a reasonable distance.
Until the mid-20th century it was not unusual for the doctor in Britain to visit patients in their own homes. A general practitioner might make 15 or 20 such house calls in a day, as well as seeing patients in the office or “surgery,” often in the evenings. This enabled him to become a family doctor in fact as well as in name. In modern practice, however, a home visit is quite exceptional and is paid only to the severely disabled or seriously ill when other recourses are ruled out. All patients are normally required to go to the doctor.
It has also become unusual for a personal doctor to be available during weekends or holidays. His place may be taken by one of his partners in a group practice, a provision that is reasonably satisfactory. General practitioners, however, may now use one of several commercial deputizing services that employs young doctors to be on call. Although some of these young doctors may be well experienced, patients do not generally appreciate this kind of arrangement.
John Walford Todd Harold ScarboroughUnited States
Whereas in Britain the doctor of first contact is regularly a general practitioner, in the United States the nature of first-contact care is less consistent. General practice in the United States was in a state of decline in the second half of the 20th century, especially in metropolitan areas. Increasingly, the general practitioner was replaced by the growing field of family practice. In 1969 family practice was recognized as a medical specialty after the American Academy of General Practice (later the American Academy of Family Physicians) and the American Medical Association created the American Board of General Practice (later American Board of Family Medicine). Since that time the field has become one of the larger medical specialties in the United States. The family physicians were the first group of medical specialists in the United States for whom recertification was required.
There is no national health service, as such, in the United States. Most physicians in the country have traditionally been in some form of private practice, whether seeing patients in their own offices, clinics, medical centres, or another type of facility and regardless of the patients’ income. Doctors are usually compensated by such state and federally supported agencies as Medicaid (for treating the poor) and Medicare (for treating the elderly); not all doctors, however, accept poor patients. There are also some state-supported clinics and hospitals where the poor and elderly may receive free or low-cost treatment, and some doctors devote a small percentage of their time to treatment of the indigent. Veterans may receive free treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals, and the federal government through its Indian Health Service provides medical services to American Indians and Alaskan natives, sometimes using trained auxiliaries for first-contact care.
In the rural United States first-contact care is likely to come from a generalist. The middle- and upper-income groups living in urban areas, however, have access to a larger number of primary medical care options. Children are often taken to pediatricians, who may oversee the child’s health needs until adulthood. Adults frequently make their initial contact with an internist, whose field is mainly that of medical (as opposed to surgical) illnesses; the internist often becomes the family physician. Other adults choose to go directly to physicians with narrower specialties, including dermatologists, allergists, gynecologists, orthopedists, and ophthalmologists.
Patients in the United States may also choose to be treated by doctors of osteopathy. These doctors are fully qualified, but they make up only a small percentage of the country’s physicians. They may also branch off into specialties, but general practice is much more common in their group than among M.D.’s.
It used to be more common in the United States for physicians providing primary care to work independently, providing their own equipment and paying their own ancillary staff. In smaller cities they mostly had full hospital privileges, but in larger cities these privileges were more likely to be restricted. Physicians, often sharing the same specialties, are increasingly entering into group associations, where the expenses of office space, staff, and equipment may be shared; such associations may work out of suites of offices, clinics, or medical centres. The increasing competition and risks of private practice have caused many physicians to join Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), which provide comprehensive medical care and hospital care on a prepaid basis. The cost savings to patients are considerable, but they must use only the HMO doctors and facilities. HMOs stress preventive medicine and out-patient treatment as opposed to hospitalization as a means of reducing costs, a policy that has caused an increased number of empty hospital beds in the United States.
While the number of doctors per 100,000 population in the United States has been steadily increasing, there has been a trend among physicians toward the use of trained medical personnel to handle some of the basic services normally performed by the doctor. So-called physician extender services are commonly divided into nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, both of whom provide similar ancillary services for the general practitioner or specialist. Such personnel do not replace the doctor. Almost all American physicians have systems for taking each other’s calls when they become unavailable. House calls in the United States, as in Britain, have become exceedingly rare.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica