title: Modernising medical regulation: where are we now?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This paper aims to outline and comment on the changes to medical regulation in the UK that provide the background to a special issue of the Journal of Health Organization and Management on regulating doctors.
  
  
  METHODS
  This paper takes the form of a review.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Although the UK medical profession enjoyed a remarkably stable regulatory structure for most of the first 150 years of its existence, it has undergone a striking transformation in the last decade. Its regulatory form has mutated from one of state-sanctioned collegial self-regulation to one of state-directed bureaucratic regulation. The erosion of medical self-regulation can be attributed to: the pressures of market liberalisation and new public management reforms; changing ideologies and public attitudes towards expertise and risk; and high profile public failures involving doctors. The "new" UK medical regulation converts the General Medical Council into a modern regulator charged with implementing policy, and alters the mechanisms for controlling and directing the conduct and performance of doctors. It establishes a new set of relationships between the medical profession and the state (including its agencies), the public, and patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This paper adds to the literature by identifying the main features of the reforms affecting the medical profession and offering an analysis of why they have taken place.
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Waring
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dixon-Woods
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yeung
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D033161:Government Regulation; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006801:Humans; D010820:Physicians / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006113:United Kingdom