Expanding community-based health services.

The recently published White Paper on developing community-based health services contains proposals which will have a direct impact on a number of hospital specialties and on the provision of primary and preventive care in the community. Many of these developments are to be welcomed, but a clearer understanding is required of the most appropriate balance between hospital and community services in the future, of the educational implications of changing patterns of care in the NHS and of the resource implications of these reforms.