Sustainable general practice: looking across Europe

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

UEMO (Union Européenne des Médecins Omnipraticiens), the European Union of General Practitioners, represents GPs in 26 European member states. It develops policy and projects to support family medicine and share best practice. It also provides an opportunity to look at other health systems and to learn from them, studying alternative ways of working and investigating ideas that may help with UK general practice.

Earlier this year (January to April 2015), a questionnaire was circulated by the UK delegation asking about workload pressures in the differing EU member states. A total of 25 states replied (Malta answering both for their public and their private healthcare systems), and, although the dataset is incomplete, it still makes for interesting reading. An overview of the findings is presented here.

DIFFERENT MODELS, DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES

Not all countries have registered lists of patients. Often it divides, as it does in the Irish Republic, into those who are covered by a means-tested, state-led system who have to be registered to take advantage of the financial benefits, and those who pay …