The Effectiveness of Health Care Teams in the National Health Service

programme. Following the model used to guide this research (see page 1) we
describe four categories of inputs:
• team task - Indicated by the size of the practice population and its
fundholding status
• team composition - team size, ratio of part-time team members, gender mix,
number of occupational groups represented in the team
• health care environment - the Jarman Index (an index of social deprivation),
its location (city, urban, urban/rural or rural)
• organisational context - the NHS Region within which the team is located.
We also describe the relationships between these four domains of inputs. The
reader will also find an account of the frequency and content of meetings held in the
teams, and of the team members’ perceptions of leadership in the team in
subsequent chapters.
Team Task
Practice population or ‘list’ size
The practice population or ‘list’ size ranged from 1500 to 21,850. The mean size was
6,902 patients with a standard deviation of 4,692 (see Figure 2.2).
Figure 2.2: Percentages of primary health care teams with patient populations or ‘list
sizes’ of various sizes
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
20000
List Size