The primary health care team : report / of a joint working group of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee and the Standing Nursing and Midwifery Advisory Committee.

  • Great Britain. Joint working group on the Primary Health Care Team.
Date:
1981
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The primary health care team : report / of a joint working group of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee and the Standing Nursing and Midwifery Advisory Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2.16 We have no firm views on the merits or otherwise of providing services from purpose—built health centres, group practice premises or even adapted or improvised premises but we have few doubts that it is important that the premises from which the team work should be well-designed and of sufficient size to provide adequate accommodation for the members of the team and their activities. We therefore welcome the emphasis given in the DHSS Health Circular HC(79)8 Primary Health Care: Health Centres and other premises'30 to the importance of involving the eventual users of the premises in the Project Team. The Department has also issued an Interim Print of a ilding Note on Health Centres31; while we consider that improvisation and adaptation have on occasions served very well and that design-—guide quality premises are by no means always necessary, this provides a sound basis for future development. We also note that the Schedule of Fees and Allowances for General Medical Practitioners in England and Wales?2 makes it clear that accommodation for attached staff, including treatment room facilities, falls within the conditions of both the cost rent and improvement grant schemes, and we hope that more GPs will avail themselves of the considerable financial assistance that can be provided under these schemes. 2.17 WE RECOMMEND THAT 4 as advised in Health Circular HC(79)8 the eventual users of primary health care premises should be consulted during the initial design stages of new premises and be represented on the Project Team; ii. all new or adapted practice premises should be of sufficient size to accommodate the members of the team and their anticipated activities; iii. new or adapted premises should be designed wherever possible to facilitate informal contact between team members; and iv. any revision of the Building Note on Health Centres should take account of our comments above in respect of the size and design of the facilities that should be provided and it should so far as possible be sufficiently broadly based to provide guidance on the design of group practice premises. Manpower deployment 2.18 Deployment of available manpower is also crucial for the effective working of teams, particularly at times when recruitment of new staff is constrained by pressure on resources. Over the past decade there has been a slow but steady growth in the number of GPs; there is no doubt that this has in part been due to the changes which have occurred in general practice over this period and there are encouraging signs that a career in general practice has become more attractive to new medical graduates now that general practice is being taught to under-graduates. Deployment of GP manpower, so far as it is amenable to control, is largely the responsibility of the Medical Practice Committee (MPC). It was put to us that there was a need for greater flexibility in GP deployment, particularly in inner city areas, to take account of the quality and type of service being provided by existing GPs in a particular area. We were told about some areas in which a high proportion of GPs are incapable or unwilling to provide a proper level of primary care. But, because the nominal ratio of GPs to population was