The Designated Areas Study

This is the report of a study made by the Health Services Research Unit at the University of Kent of the geographical distribution of family doctors in England, of their mobility and settlement patterns, of the factors influencing their decisions of where to practise, of the professional, social and environmental differences between areas with high and low doctor/patient ratios, and of the effectiveness of various controls and incentives which are built into the administration of the general practitioner services. It is a study of one aspect of health service policy. The data on which the study is based are drawn partly from published and unpublished statistics collected by the Department of Health and Social Security and the Medical Practices Committee, and mainly from the results of a postal survey conducted among a sample of about one in ten general practitioners in England in 1968. Throughout the report the aim has been to concentrate on furthering our understanding of the nature and causes of manpower shortages in certain parts of the country, and on exploring the range of available policy decisions which might rectify observed imbalances