General practitioners' cluster: a model to reorient primary health care to public health services

ARTICLE ARTICLE ‘Why a renewal of primary health care (PHC), and why now, more than ever?’ is the question by which the World Health Report 2008 is introduced.1 A primary care system in which health professionals are just simply entry points into the health system can respond neither to the challenges of a changing world nor to the growing expectations of people for better performance. The question of how to renew PHC is answered in the Report by ‘putting people first’, that is, by visioning a people-centred PHC service ‘delivered by teams that focus on health needs, create enduring personal relationships, take responsibility for the health of all in the community along the life cycle, as well as for tackling determinants of ill-health, and in which people are partners in managing their own health and that of their community’. The vision has remained a vision until now,2 and it will remain a vision forever if its implementation is considered just a health care system reform. A definitive link between PHC and public health services has to be formed to transform the vision into reality, in line with the Health 2020,3 the new World Health Organization European health policy framework and strategy, which indicates as one of its four priority areas ‘the strengthening of people-centred health systems along with public health capacity’. Lacking preventive services is one of the many previously identified anomalies of the Hungarian primary care system that needs to be corrected.4 Primary care presently is provided by one general practitioner (GP) and one nurse per practice, assisted by an …