Implementing a national treatment service for dependent smokers:initial challenges and solutions

Abstract

Before 1999, few treatment services for nicotine-addicted smokers existed in England. When national treatment services were introduced, those responsible for setting them up liaised closely with primary care health services. Setting up an entirely new national service, treating a new category of patient (smokers motivated to stop) was an ambitious aim and this paper documents the problems encountered in the early stages of this process