GPs as accountants: A critical appraisal of the changing role of GPs through the development of the internal NHS market and primary health care trusts.
‘Free at the point of delivery’: A critical review of the extent to which this founding principle of the NHS has been undermined since the 1960s
August 7, 2021From National Health Service to a health service for the nation: Can treatment abroad be justified?
August 7, 2021GPs as accountants: A critical appraisal of the changing role of GPs through the development of the internal NHS market and primary health care trusts.
Example public health service dissertation topic 3:
GPs as accountants: A critical appraisal of the changing role of GPs through the development of the internal NHS market and primary health care trusts.
The changing nature of the NHS and the introduction of the internal market within the 1980s/1990s led to a change in the role of doctors and GPs within the service. Where treatment was to be offered, costs had now also to be considered. This process was continued and augmented under Labour with primary care trusts and a resultant rise in the number of practice managers has been noted in official literature of the period. This dissertation evaluates the extent to which the ‘cost benefit analysis’ of care has resulted in better patient care at GP level since the 1980s onwards and makes a number of comments as to how the present proposal for reform can be seen to feed into this longer-term movement.
Suggested initial topic reading:
- Kmietowicz, Z. (2011) ‘Cameron proposes radical changes to England’s NHS reforms’, BMJ, 342, d3624.
- Reynolds, L. and McKee, M. (2012) ‘GP commissioning and the NHS reforms: What lies behind the hard sell?’, Journal of the Royal Society for Medicine, Vol. 105, pp. 7-10.
- Wilkinson, E. (2011) ‘NHS reform: Take two’, The Lancet, Vol. 378(9786), pp. 114-115.
