ABSTRACT
Cities have immensely varied cultural and racial neighbourhoods. They may be students or refugees/homeless families or people who travel into the city each day to work. As parts of cities decay there are more people who have few choices and feel trapped by poverty, poor housing, poor employment prospects and social isolation. This chapter discusses the characteristics of polyclinics and urgent care centres with examples from Europe and the USA and Pearl Brown describes the development of a new service in South Westminster, London. In principle, polyclinics offer great potential for integrating health services in a primary care setting. Polyclinics bring together several providers under one physical or conceptual roof. These providers may bridge the ground between specialists and generalists and bring in community care social services. Local distress about the loss of the local accident and emergency service, plus concern about some poor quality general practice in the vicinity, promoted the setting up of the nurse practitioner service.
