> Subject: Re: gp cover
> Dr Kumari & Dr Nerney wrote:
> >
> > Dear Colleagues and others,
> > After lurking in the www undergrowth for some time watching your
> > correspondence I'd like to kick off by asking a question.
> > How many GP(s) does a geographically small town of 30,000 need(not want)
> > to be on duty at any one time for the usual out of hours "emergency"
> > house calls?
> > The reason I ask is because change is in the air here in Gib. Primary
> > Care too and the new Government shows signs of being prepared to listen
> > to what we GPs have got to say- jealous eh?
>
>
You need another piece of information to answer this question; how
frequently are you prepared to accept that a call to an "emergency"
(your emphasis) will not be responded to immediately because all the
GP(s) on call are already dealing with them.
It is fair to assume that the incidence of calls is more or less a
Poisson distribution (in fact it will not be; I am told that calls
tend to be clustered around certain specific times, like an hour or
so after the pubs close) and given that, and some staticstics about
the rate of calls per member of the population to be covered, and the
time needed by a GP to service a call, one can compute the probability
that there are more calls outstanding than there are GPs to service
them.
N very B. YOU CAN NEVER GUARANTEE THAT THERE WILL
NOT BE MORE CALLS THAN GPs; BUT YOU CAN ASSIGN A
PROBABILITY TO ITS HAPPENING.
Mike Wells
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Professor Mike Wells
Department of Physics, The University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
Phone: 0113-233-2339 E-Mail [log in to unmask]
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