General Medical Practice: Some Comparisons between the Work of Primary Care Physicians in the United States and England and Wales

Data on comparable questions from national surveys of British general practitioners and American G.P.'s, internists, pediatricians, and obstetricians are compared. British G.P.'s see many mere patients in their offices and on home visits. American primary care physicians use a wider array of diagnaostic procedures, are more closely associated with professional colleagues, and express less frustration and dissatisfaction. Although American primary care physicians perform more complicated and varied tasks than British G.P.'s, such practices, for the most part, tend to be relatively restricted in dealing with many ordinary primary care problems. This trend is particularly clear among office-based specialists in internal medicine and obstetrics, and the use of paraprofesionals is discussed as a way of broadening these practices. Other differences among thypes of American dectors and between group and nongroup practitioners are also noted, as well as their perspectives on widely discussed innovations in the organization of medical care.