[Changing role of the family physician in British National Health Service].

Over the last ten years the traditional role of primary care in Great Britain has been undergoing major changes with the major impact being the introduction of what is termed "GP fundholding", a process by which GPs hold budgets to purchase care from hospitals on behalf of their patients. This paper addresses how the system of fundholding operates in practice and points out the difference between the new and the previous system in which the health authority would plan care for the whole of a district and costs by hospitals would be covered by an all-inclusive system. The paper studies the rationale of the introduction of the fundholding and examines the evidence on how successful the approach has been. With reference to a systematic literature review of the evidence on fundholding's outcomes undertaken by the author, the paper examines the evidence for and against fundholding under the following headings: efficiency, equity, quality, choice and responsiveness. The paper then addresses more recent changes to the British health care system and shows how these have changed the role of the family doctor irrevocablly.