Outpatients & Their Doctors - A Study of Patients, Potential Patients, GPS

Based on a study carried out in ten representative areas of England, this publication examines the experiences and views of patients, people who would like to have been referred to hospital and were not and of general practitioners and hospital doctors. The study showed that only about one in eight outpatient attendances are for new patients, that one in five outpatients had been attending for five years or more, and that general practitioners were unaware of the continuing attendance of a third of their patients. In addition to the findings of the study, the likely impact of recent changes in the organization of the NHS are also discussed.