It is January 2012. Your local GP starts work at 7 a.m.
A member of a four-doctor, five-nurse and three-healthcare assistant primary care team, which also benefits from the input of a full-time physiotherapist and a "half-time" occupational therapist and social worker, he will work until 4 p.m. today.
He logs onto his A5-sized computer, enters his code and begins to read the display of calls made to patients of the team during the night. He notes an 84-year-old woman was seen with symptoms suggesting possible early-onset dementia. She was not sick enough for a referral to the A & E department but clearly will need follow-up.
He messages the social worker on the centre's intra-net to alert her and pencils in a house call to the elderly patient for later that day.
He then sees patients from 7.45 a.m. to 9.15 a.m. at which point he is due to attend an hour- long primary care centre management meeting. This is a routine weekly affair, designed to ensure maximum inter-disciplinary awareness and co-operation.
He will then take a quick coffee break before seeing patients again. During an early lunch he plans to meet informally with the teams' occupational therapists and physiotherapist to discuss the details of a new falls/osteoporosis programme they hope to introduce later that month.
House calls follow next; the older woman is indeed mildly confused.
She lives alone following the recent death of her husband. Although he suspects that she has early-onset Alzheimer's disease, he will arrange for a full range of blood tests to be carried out by one of the nurses. These will be analysed in the centre's mini-laboratory and he will see the woman again following an assessment by the occupational therapist.
He finishes with a "Wellman" session, at which several team members contribute to a prevention programme attended by a group of 10 male patients.
Before he finishes work, he checks in with his colleague Dr Dune; she started work at 3 p.m. and will be in the centre until 10 p.m. seeing patients during the evening surgery.
He leaves at 4.10 p.m. and drives straight to the gym. As he works out he reflects on the old way of doing things.
Back in 2000, when he was a trainee GP he had serious reservations about staying in general practice.
The fragmented, isolated and overloaded nature of the job made him wonder if he could commit to a life at the coalface of general practice.
He is glad now that he did. The major reforms introduced in the 2001 Health Strategy have made primary care the centre of one of the best health services in Europe.