The terms "comprehensive medical care" and "primary physician" are not particularly new, but they became a part of current language with the publication of the Millis Report ("The Graduate Education of Physicians") in 1966.
Many years before—14 to be exact —a large scale experiment in medical education was begun at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Basically, the experiment was designed to test the concepts of comprehensive care and to evaluate the educational advantages of such a program to medical students. The results of this long series of experiments have recently been published in this 391-page report.
The text is highly readable and does not suffer from great variability of style despite the number of contributors, all a part of this extensive program. All terms are well defined, experimental protocols are well worked out, and conclusions drawn follow the research design as well as one would expect from a project