Public health services provided in the framework of general practitioners' clusters

Abstract

ARTICLE ARTICLE The public health focused operation of primary health care (PHC) is impeded by its reactive approach and old fashioned treatment-oriented organization in many countries, including Hungary. Our general practitioners’ (GPs’) cluster model, to solve the presently existing organizational problems, builds a new structure described by Adany et al. 1 The lack of adequate education in public health of the current PHC staff2 represents another crucial obstacle of the improvement of PHC performance, which is also handled by the Programme.3 An additional obstacle is that guidelines for PHC preventive services are generally lacking. Although certain countries have developed such kind of guidelines, their proposals are adopted by other countries to a limited extent. The Decree No. 51/1997 of the Minister of Welfare (on the compulsory health insurance-based health services, aimed to prevent and timely detect the diseases and the certification of screenings) defines the preventive tasks of GPs and health visitors. Although, the listed tasks are almost entirely in harmony with the international recommendations, due to the lack of organizational base, financing incentives, relevant training, detailed protocols and auditing, the interventions/screenings prescribed by the decree are hardly implemented. The performance indicators obtained in the preliminary studies in connection with the Swiss Contribution Programme are unacceptably low: 1. Assessment of family history, 36.2% 2. Assessment of dietary habit, 24.7% 3. Screening for alcohol misuse, 16.3% 4. Assessment of smoking …