Public Attitudes to General Practitioner Services: A Reflection of an Inverse Care Law in Intraurban Primary Medical Care?

The idea of an ‘inverse law of care’ affecting the provision of medical services and operating both spatially and socially is discussed. The paper reports a survey undertaken of attitudes to certain facets of general practitioner services to investigate whether differential attitudes exist between socially and spatially distinct subgroups of the population and considers whether these could be related to variations in service provision and organisation. Results from this empirical—behavioural survey suggest that the social class of respondents does influence attitudes to the journey for medical care and to certain administrative procedures encountered during the receipt of care but that the physician's ‘affective behaviour’ is generally favourably viewed by respondents regardless of their social status. The implications of these findings for the planning of intraurban primary medical care and its utilisation by the public are developed.