Sustainability in primary care

摘要

The very mention of 'sustainability' is usually enough to send me screaming from the room, and so I was minded to skip over Tim Ballard's editorial on the subject.' I'm glad I chose instead to read what he had to say, as I would otherwise have missed an unusually thoughtful and thought-provoking article.He points to the role of the GP in providing high quality generalist personalised care' and argues persuasively that such an approach is resource efficient. He extends this argument to consider the potential impact of commissioning and the opportunity this provides foravoiding unnecessary duplication of services. However, my experiences to date suggest that the precedents are not encouraging, and I have observed that most commissioning decisions made in the name of efficiency achieve anything but (unless this is the same type of efficiency that persuades manufacturers to outsource their labour abroad).