Lone Pedersen

TL;DR: There is some evidence to suggest that the method of payment of primary care physicians affects their behaviour, but the findings' generalisability is unknown, especially in terms of the relative impact of salary versus capitation payments.

TL;DR: There is some evidence to suggest that how a primary care physician is paid does affect his/her behaviour but the generalisability of these studies is unknown and most policy changes in the area of payment systems are inadequately informed by research.

TL;DR: The use of target payments in the remuneration of PCPs was associated with improvements in immunisation rates, but the increase was statistically significant in only one of the two studies.

TL;DR: There is little evidence on whether a shift of services from secondary to primary care is responsible for general practitioners' increased workload, and scope for making generalisations is limited, so general practitioners have little more than anecdotal evidence to support their claims of greatly increased workloads.

TL;DR: The purpose of this paper is to examine critically existing definitions and uses of the term 'primary health care' with a particular focus on their usefulness in health policy, clinical practice and research relating to health care systems.