Big Business: The Corporatization of Primary Care in the UK and the USA

Abstract

The corporatization of primary care in the USA and the UK over recent years has transformed the way that these services are managed and delivered. Traditional approaches based around small practices of doctors and their teams as the primary organizational unit have been largely overtaken by new models in which doctors, nurses and other primary care professionals work within much larger organizations. This article explores the experience in the USA and the UK of seeking to organize primary care more corporately, and suggests that a tightly managed organizational model does not work well in primary care. Looser, network-based models are needed in which some of the benefits of corporatization can be achieved while the traditional small-organization virtues of primary care can continue to thrive.