An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Family doctors are usually called GPs, or general practitioners.
My name is Louis Brassy. I’m a so-called general practitioner doctor in the centre of London. I’m one of two doctors working in our clinic and between us we have, let’s say, 3,500 patients.
England still has a system which it’s had, really, since the Second World War. Where theoretically every patient in England is registered with one family doctor, almost always near where they live. If they’re ever sick, if any of the family are sick, they go directly, initially to the family doctor, unless it’s an emergency, who most cases, I think 80% of cases he can sort out by himself. And about 20% of cases, if they need to see a specialist, he will send them on to whichever specialty is most appropriate.
Rather than approaching a specialist directly, anybody who is sick under normal circumstances will go and see his general practitioner who is qualified at a basic level in all sorts of different illnesses and can provide primary care. First of all people tend to be registered with their GPs for a long period of time, so after a few years you tend to know the whole family, you tend to know each patient and the context in which they are turning up. You tend to have all the records to hand, you tend to know what illnesses they’ve had, what it’s likely to be and what’s in the family generally; which sometimes helps you, rather than somebody who would just turn up to a doctor they’ve never seen before.
No money is exchanged when you go to see a doctor in this country. We never ask for money for general medical services. The government pays us to look
after patients using a kind of complex formula; a lot of which depends on how many people are registered with us. |