Guidelines for general practitioners with a special interest in dermatology: where are we now?

The NHS Plan published in 2000 proposed that, ‘By 2004 … there will be up to 1,000 specialist GPs taking referrals from fellow GPs’. Dermatology was identified as a specialty in which GPs with a Special Interest (GPwSIs) services might be usefully developed. The NHS Improvement Plan published in June 2004 confirmed, ‘We now have around 1,300 GPs with a special interest providing 700,000 procedures in the community previously done only in hospital’.