Primary care: core values. Core values in a changing world.

In 1920, the Dawson report advocated a population based approach to the organisation of health services, the allocation of resources, and the training of health care staff. It also introduced the concepts of primary and secondary levels of care and of primary care health centres. For several decades these ideas lay dormant, until medical specialisation, fragmentation of health services, and the introduction of publicly funded health care made their logic inescapable. The term "primary care" became common coinage, and in 1978 its fundamental importance was recognised by the World Health Organisation. In the same year, the US Institute of Medicine identified the four essentials of good primary care as accessibility, comprehensiveness, coordination, and continuity.