Comparative Study of Payment Systems for General Practitioners in Four Countries

As main health service providers in primary care, general practitioners (GPs) undertake the responsibility of gatekeepers for residents' health. Vigorously training GPs will contribute to the transformation of the healthcare delivery model, and the addressing of the issue related to difficult and high cost of getting medical treatment in China. However, the number of qualified GPs is insufficient in China, and low income is a major factor associated with the willingness of medical students to work as a GP. How to take actions to recruit, retain and appropriately employ GPs in primary care is a problem that needs to be addressed urgently in the development of China's primary care workforce. To provide evidence for the improvement of China's payment system for GPs, we collected the information related to the payment for GPs in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and China by reviewing relevant studies and relevant official websites of the four countries, and performed an inter-county comparative a