Continuity of care is one of the core attributes of primary care, which interacts with first-contact, accessibility, coordination and comprehensiveness in a mutual, supportive, and strengthening way to form an interactive mechanism of primary care.This paper first reviews the current literature on definitions and concepts of continuity of care, ascertain the key elements of continuity, and pinpoint the relationship between the dominant and recessive elements.Then, it defines the connotations of continuity of care and their boundaries in the context of primary care, according to the principles of controllability, exhaustion and exclusiveness.Finally it conceptualizes the primary care continuity to lay the foundation for further studies on operationally defining the primary care attributes of general practice.

Accessibility is one of the core attributes of primary care, which is closely associated with first-contact, positively interacts with comprehensiveness, and is very influential to continuity and coordination.This paper first reviews the current literature on definition and concept of accessibility and highlights the characteristics and contents of primary care accessibility, then simplifies the overlapping between accessibility and other core attributes of primary care, and finally provides the definition of primary care accessibility and its core elements to lay the foundation for the development of measurement and evaluation tools for the core attributes of general practice.

Objective:The objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the core attributes of the four general practice models in Guangzhou, Dongguan and Shenzhen, and to provide the suggestions for strengthening the general practice functions. Methods: We used the two stage sampling method in this study. Firstly, three CHCs in Guangzhou, two in Dongguan and two in Shenzhen, and the general medical outpatient department in the Shenzhen Hospital of the University of Hong Kong were selected. Secondly, we used the convenience sam-pling method to perform investigation. A PCAT-AE modified Chinese edition was adapted to measure the patients’ primary care experience. A total of 1 712 patients participated in the questionnaire survey, the number of which 1 645 copies were valid. Results: Generally, the general practice core attributes’ total scores from that hospital were higher than those from Guangzhou communities (55. 3 vs. 45. 9, P<0. 05), Dongguan commu-nities (55. 3 vs. 49. 2, P<0. 05) and the Shenzhen communities (55. 3vs. 51. 7, P<0. 05). Conclusion:The primary care implementation was different in accordance with the characteristics of regions, and the general practice core attributes had different characteristics in different models. It could constantly improve the primary care services to each model’s specific circumstances.

Objective:The general practice attributes constitute a basis for the high primary care performance. In this paper, the general practice attributes are measured, their influencing factors are analyzed, the causes of exist-ing problems are explored, and suggestions are straight forwarded to strengthen the general practice function. Meth-ods:In this study, a PCAT-AE modified Chinese edition was adopted. The research was conducted into 8 community health centers and the general outpatient clinic of the University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen Hospital. They were eligi-ble adult patients who could communicate properly and had visited the same general practitioners at least three times. One-to-one interviews were conducted and a total of 1 712 patients participated in the survey, a number of which 1 645 effective samples were considered for analysis. Results: The total general practice attributes score was 49. 0. The first-contact score of 69 . 8 , continuity score being 63 . 1 and the cultural competence score of 51 . 2 were relatively high. The scores for the access (40. 8) and community orientation (31. 0) were relatively low. The general practice attribute scores were influenced by the social demographic and health characteristics, and the health care service uti-lization. Also, the general practice core attributes were positively related to the patient satisfaction (OR>1). Con-clusion:Comparing to the numbers in the developed countries, the general practice attribute scores were still low in China. Therefore, to strengthen the general practice function, works could be done at the individual, organization and system levels.

Objective To investigate the concentrations and clinical significance of secreted frizzled-related protein-1(SFRP1) insaliva and gingival crevicular fluid of patients with oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) as well as the expression of SFRP1 in patients' OSF buccal mucosa. Methods Twenty OSF patients aged 20 to 40 years old were recruited and randomly divided into two experimental groups, of which were triamcinolone acetonide group and combined triamcinolone acetonide and salvia miltiorrhiza group, respectively. Ten healthy volunteers matchable in sex and age with the patients were recruited as control group. Concentrations of SFRP1 in saliva and gingival crevicular fluid were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay before and after a continuous treatment of 4 weeks. The visual analogue scale(VAS) pain scores and opening size were also recorded. The expression of SFRP1 in samples from OSF patients' buccal mucosa was also detected using immunohistochemical method. SPSS 16.0 was applied to analyze the results of the experiments. Results The concentrations of SFRP1 in saliva and gingival crevicular fluid before treatment were (105.8 ± 27.6) ng/L and (84.7 ± 33.2) ng/L in triamcinolone acetonide group, and (86.6 ± 23.2) ng/L and (97.0 ± 23.2) ng/L in combining group, which were both significantly lower(P<0.01) than that in normal group([153.0±32.8] ng/L and [157.5±31.1] ng/L), respectively. The positive expression rate of SFRP1 in OSF group(10%[2/20]) was significantly lower than that of the control group(10/10)(P<0.01). After the treatment for 4 weeks, the concentrations of SFRP1 increased to (141.2 ± 35.3) ng/L and (130.6 ± 31.3) ng/L in triamcinolone acetonide group, and to (148.5 ± 65.9) ng/L and (123.0 ± 27.4) ng/L in combining group, which were both significantly higher than those of pre-treatment, respectively(P<0.01). Conclusions The concentrations of SFRP1 in saliva and gingival crevicular fluid of OSF patients, which positively corelated to the expression of SFRP1 in OSF patients' buccal mucosa, were significantly lower than that of normal individuals and increased significantly after treatments of local injections of triamcinolone acetonide only or combined with salvia miltiorrhiza.