The Contribution of the Norwegian Board of Health to the Report on the Regular Medical Practitioner Scheme
Summary of Report of the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision 8/2003
In this report the experience of the supervision authorities, two years after implementation of the regular general practitioner scheme, is summarized.
The report is the contribution of the Norwegian Board of Health to the Ministry of Health’s status report on the regular general practitioner scheme.
Feedback from the Norwegian Board of Health in the counties indicates that the general medical practitioner scheme is going well, and that the scheme provides better conditions for following up patients. The report points out that there is room for improvement in some important areas, for example:
- Primary physician services in municipalities with inadequate manpower levels must be followed up
- Some excess capacity is necessary in order to fulfil all the rights that patients have in relation to primary physician services
- The coordinating role of regular medical practitioners must be strengthened
- Regular medical practitioners’ contracts should be developed and followed up
- Services for people with chronic illness must be improved, by reducing the length of patient lists
- Community medicine services must be improved