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General practice: who's paying the piper?
Author(s) -
Pegram Robert W
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2005.tb06936.x
Subject(s) - citation , service (business) , library science , primary care , executive director , management , psychology , medicine , sociology , computer science , business , family medicine , marketing , economics
Central Northern Adelaide Health Service, Adelaide, SA. Robert W Pegram, BSc, BM BS, MHSM, Executive Director, Primary Health Care Services. Reprints will not be available from the author. Correspondence: Dr Robert W Pegram, Central Northern Adelaide Health Service, PO Box 1898, Adelaide, SA 5001. Rob.pegram@health.sa.gov.au The Medical Journal of Australia ISSN: 0025729X 18 July 2005 183 2 94-94 ©The Medical Journal of Australia 2005 www.mja.com.au Wish list is another matter). I contend that, in the future, t clear distinction between practice revenues and incomes. If one is determined to continue to diminishing pool, then so be it. The second point of conflict is that society h primary care — a public good — to be provided la a private business model. Public goods are about a he titi the T re are three points of conflict in how general praconers receive income that are, I believe, at the centre of internally inconsistent and often confused position in which we find ourselves. The first is between how general practices receive their income and how general practitioners receive theirs. When the world was flat and most practices were the practitioners in them, this did not matter. Today it does, as the many income streams flowing into a practice form a pool from which, after being evaporated by costs, the practitioners receive fiscal sustenance. Provided the pool is sufficiently deep, it matters little — in purely financial terms — how the income stream flows (in ideological terms, this here will be a practitioner drink from a