Devolved accountability for primary care has been introduced into the UK through a range of local contracts for personal medical services (PMS) authorized by the 1997 NHS (Primary Care) Act. These four exemplary case studies illustrate the PMS pilot programmes and represent a diversity of emerging organizational developments that appear to be responding effectively to different health care needs and environments. This is particularly apparent at those sites targeting the most marginalized patient groups where interprofessional collaboration and interagency partnerships are characteristic of a new and broader primary health care approach. Elsewhere the PMS pilots retain and indeed may extend some of the more restrictive practices of the conventional primary medical care model. Future policy formulation, therefore, needs to promote flexible management structures and processes which can support, through local contracts, the further development of more comprehensive and population-based primary care.
