(The impact on general practitioners of the changing balance of care for elderly people living in institutions)

The number of institutional care places for elderly people in Britain doubled to 563,000 between 1980 and 1995, with NHS beds accounting for less than ten per cent of the total by the end of this period. In this week's BMJ Shane Kavanagh from the University of Kent and Martin Knapp from the London School of Economics consider the impact that this shift is having on general practice. They find that the declining provision of NHS long term care for elderly people has increased the workload of family doctors and the predicted increase in demand for general practitioners in Britain to cope with the transition in the future is equivalent to 160 full time doctors.

Contact:
Mr Shane Kavanagh, Research Fellow, Personal Social Services, Research Unit, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent