ABSTRACT
Primary Care Groups (PCGs) were established as a managerial board of health professionals in England and Wales and started operating in shadow form at the end of October 1998. This chapter reports on the findings of Primary Care Groups project and examines the managerial skills required of Board members to fulfil their role by investigating PCGs during their pilot period up to April 1999. The questionnaire, based on data collected in the semi-structured interviews and secondary sources, covered the roles and functions of PCGs, managerial skills, strategic issues, areas of conflict and classification questions. The key managerial skills identified were similar to those highlighted by members of the case study PCG and indicate that there is a set of core managerial skills required by a PCG to perform key tasks. A longitudinal approach would trace the development of these PCGs and demonstrate to what extent they had adopted best practice.
