GENERAL-PRACTICE CARE AND PATIENTS PRIORITIES IN EUROPE - AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

Insight into patients' priorities with respect to health care should c omplement the views of professionals and policy makers on what is thou ght to be appropriate health care. To determine the strengths and weak nesses of general practice care from patients' perspectives written su rveys were performed among patients in Denmark, Germany, Israel, Nethe rlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and United Kingdom (n = 3540). The po tential quality problems identified were spread over the different cou ntries: the low involvement of general practitioners in out-of-hours s ervices in Portugal; the low provision of routine screening in Sweden, Norway and The Netherlands; the lack of a defined patient population in Germany; the lack of a formal gatekeeper role to secondary care in general practice in Germany and Sweden; and the low number of home vis its in Sweden. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reser ved.