Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The material was obtained in a longitudinal study of general practice in a variety of organisational and physical settings. More specifically, it was designed to assess the effects of a move to a Health Centre on providers and recipients of care by means both of before and after comparisons and by comparing Health Centre practices with practices not accommodated in Health Centres. Two group practices, one with six, the other with five principals, were scheduled to move to a purpose-built Health Centre in 1973. The practices agreed to be studied over a period covering the year before the move as well as two years after the move. Additionally two practices, a partnership and a single-handed one, not planning to move to a Health Centre, agreed to participate in the study. Changes occurred in the latter practices in the course of the study: the single-handed practice became a partnership and the partnership, with the retirement of a principal, single-handed. A third comparative practice, a single-handed one, joined the sample. The patient studies were intended to contribute information on patient views and experience of the care provided by the practices, and, in the case of the group practices, the effects of the move on them. The information was obtained from medical records, from taped recordings of doctor-patient consultations, from interviews with patients in their homes and their doctors' surgeries. Additionally, data on the consultation was abstracted from the doctor's notes. The data on the providers of care were obtained mainly by intensive unstructured open-ended interviews and by observation at practice meetings and elsewhere.Main Topics:Variables 1. The Attenders' Enquiries The object was to obtain information about patient requirements of specific consultations with a doctor and their assessments of the consultation immediately afterwards. Patients attending their doctors' surgeries...