Defining and conceptualizing general practice:The comprehensiveness of primary care / 中国卫生政策研究

ABSTRACT

Comprehensiveness of care is one of the core attributes of primary health care, and it has a great impact on the first diagnosis,accessibility,coordination and continuity to form the primary health care high perform-ance mechanism. Comprehensiveness of care has been playing an increasingly significant role in case when faced with the challenges of the aging of Chinese population,the high prevalence of chronic diseases,and the rapidly rising cost of health care. It is a fundamental problem for researchers,policy makers,and practitioners to clarify the definition of comprehensiveness of primary health care,which is the basis for managing comprehensive services. This article has systematically reviewed the current researches on definitions of comprehensiveness of basic health care, ascertained the key elements of comprehensiveness,and pinpointed the relationship between the dominant and recessive elements. Then,it defined the conception and the boundary of comprehensiveness of care in the context of primary health care,ac-cording to three principles-controllability, exhaustion, and exclusiveness, and finally conceptualized the primary health care comprehensiveness for further study on the operational definition of primary health care attributes.