Future balance of care--the GP's view.

Abstract

the strategy for the next decade. The broad pattern established in that document and in subsequent plans remains the basis upon which the Government is working. The explicit current NHS priorities are services for the elderly, the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped and children. The responsibility for meeting these priorities is increasingly becoming concentrated in the community as opposed to the hospital service. It is difficult to measure, over the recent years, the extent to which there has been a switch in emphasis from the hospital to the community sector of resource provision and the responsibility to provide care. One aspect is that, in spite of an increasing elderly population, the number of in-patients in geriatric departments has remained constant, another is that the number of patients resident in mental illness and mental handicap hospitals has declined. These are some of the indications which point to the fact that the demand for care is