Essay On UK's National Health System: Funding, Structure, And Future Challenges.

National Health System

Write an essay on Delivering HealthCare In The UK?

The health care system can be referred as an organization, institution or such resources who deliver health services to meet the health needs of the people living.  All over the world, there is a wide variety of health systems and each nation design and develop their health system according to their need and resources available, although all the health system comprises of common element i.e. primary health care and public health care measures. 

National health came into existence after the Second World War and become in 1948 after a legislation passed in 1946, 1947, 1948.Aneurin Bevan, the health minister founded NHS on the principles of universality. The System was born with an idea to provide equal healthcare system to all the population.This is the system which is publicly funded health care system in Uk and is also termed as oldest single payer system in the world .We can also say NHS is an example of truly socialised medicine .NHs Compromises of two broad sections one delas with management ,strategy and policies on the other section deals with medical and clinical care(Thomson, 2004) .In United Kingdom, all the permanent residents are provided with health care system  by the national health service (NHS) or by Britain  public health service, which is free at the time of use but its (81%) is paid through general taxation and other (21%) is contributed by national insurance and rest (7%) are the other charges(Agrizzi, n.d.) . This (NHS) National Health System was established in 1948.and motive is to provide free health care to all the living population. Services like dental care, eye test and prescription are not free and are chargeable. However, pregnant women’s, senior citizens, person with low income exempt from the charges. NHS provides health care like primary care, ophthalmology, long term health care dentistry, inpatient care. Not only is this free ambulance service also provided to the patients in case of emergencies. In specific emergencies, air transport is also provided by the military, navy of air force aircraft.

 The Local branches of NHS handle the local health care strategy, but the overall strategy is taken care by the department of health or other regional bodies. The local healthcare of England looks after by the 28 strategic health authorities in England (Ham, 1996). These Strategic authorities are the link between Department of health and the NHS. Health care services in the UK are again divided into primary and secondary trust which is directly accountable to strategic health authorities. Primary trust includes general practitioners; dentist, opticians, and pharmist. If proper treatment is not given by your GP then you further refer to secondary care (UK government to examine NHS prescribing, 1995). Secondary care includes the special care of the hospitals.

How the NHS works?

NHS born with an idea to provide better health for all citizens irrespective of their wealth. Hence Minister of Health launched it based on three core principles:

• It should meet everyone’s need.
• Should be free at the time of delivery.
• And finally based on clinical need, not on ability to pay.

NHS developed on these three principles later on, in July 2000, new principles were added and helps in full scale modernisation of the programme .The aim of the principles added is to provide comprehensive range of services ,to change services with the need and preferences of the patients, to respond to different needs of the population ,work in such away to  minimize the error and quality of services is to be improved , support the staff, Funds of the public should be solely used for the NHS patients.

National health services are majorly funded by the taxpayer, but national insurance also contributes a small amount, a small amount of income from overseas visitors is also included in the costing of the NHS. National Health System Trust also generates income by treating the patients privately. In England the revenue is generated  by this way is 0.6%, whereas in the rest of the UK is much less. NHs is entirely funded by the public and in 2001there is an increase in the national insurance rates, which is mainly raised to increase NHS funding, which in turn balances the national insurance changes and taxation changes although 80 percent of the funding  is contributed by general taxation (UK. Better information for the UK public, 2003). In 2008/2009a roughly budget of £1,980 contributes for every man, woman and child in the U.K. in 1948 when the NHS was launched its budget was £437 million. And in the year 2015/2016 it was roughly around £115.4 billion. From the total budget of NHS 60 % is paid as salary to staff  and 20% is paid for medicines, drugs and other supplies and rest 20% splits between the maintenance of building equipments, training cost and also on the cleaning and catering on the other hand. For the health priorities in their area almost 80%of the budget is distributed by local trusts.

The NHS is an organisation structured in such a way to deliver good care all over the country. Under the health and social care act (2012) an organisational structure was modified on 1 April 2013, involving who will make the decision and who will spend money (Edwards, 2012). The national health care system in the UK is controlled by the UK government with department of health, which in turn is politically responsible for the services. The clinical commission groups are accountable for the planning the health services and is also responsible for improving health of the local population. A number of organisations are commissioned to provide NHS Services, which includes private sector companies and NHS trusts. NHS foundation trusts originated from an NHS trust to give them a greater financial freedom and independent legal status (Krishna Regime, 2013).  Following are the types of NHS trust and foundation which provides NHS services in specific areas.

• NHS acute trusts.
• NHS Ambulance service trusts.
• NHS care trusts.
• NHS mental health trusts.
• NHS special health authorities.
• NHS plays a vital role in training new doctors and is employed by the NHS and work in NHS run hospitals.

Funding of health services

It is believed that with the passage of time new spending pressure are likely to rise and it will become more difficult to provide sufficient quality of care. With the growing economy income, peoples' expectations for health services will also rise. In future the economic growth will put an upward pressure on the NHS budgets with the growth in wage economy will rise as a result hospital bill will also rise. Rise in the grey population also bring challanges with them ,such demographic change had a great impact on wide range of public policy areas .With the rise in ageing population in future decades also have direct impact on the cost of providing health care.The population now treated is  quite older than the one treated 50 years ago .Hence , it is estimated that demographic changes will increase the spending upto  0.1-0.9 %per year till year 2050.There is a favourable impact on the health spending  requirements due to these demographic changes .NHs feels pressure to ensure that increase in the wages of public setor keep pace with increase in the pay of private sector job. Hence it is suggested that the adversely changing demographics require spending to be increase 30 percent over next 40 years (UK. Increased use of private healthcare sector, 2004). Hence, if each year to meet the growing wage spending is to be increased by 2%, as a result, demographic changes would require 3.2% additional funding in real terms.

The community health is affected by the six factors that are political, social, economic, heredity, environment behaviour and health care delivery system.

In a Survey done in 2004 a higher level satisfaction against the medical servies of NHS was found by the individuals who used NHS services .92% of hospital inpatients were satisfied with the treatment ,87%of the GP patients were satisfied with their GP,87%outpatients and 70% accident and emergency department patients were also found satisfied .From this survey of satisfaction it is not clear that national press is generally critical of the service  as 64% were reporting it to be critical and compared just 13%were saying national press is favourable .Newspaper were also reported as less favourable and reliable as compared to broadcast media .The information from friends  and from GPs is considered to be 77%  reliable and from 75% from medical professionals considered to be reliable .

Conclusion

NHS plays a vital role in the health care system of UK .Despite of the many satisfactory results in its working, with the changing health scenarios and changing needs of the society it still faces challenge .To maximize the benefits of National health care system to the common population  some new concepts are introduced such as personalised care ,clinical governance ,prescription by the legalised pharmacists(Ramsay, 1994) .It is also the responsibility of National Health care system to make  the new discoveries  and treatment available to the public .In spite of this Climate change and not proper qualified staff  are the challenges in the working of  National Heath care System. An analysis done in 2010 of the health care system of seven rich countries NHS was put second.

References

Abruzzi, D. (N.d.). Costing Information in the UK NHS: The (Non-) Use of Cost Information in the UK NHS Trust Hospitals. SSRN Journal.

Davis, K. (1944). Demographic Fact and Policy in India. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 22(3), p.256.

Eastman, P. (2012). How comparative research affects health care management. Oncology Times UK, 9(8), pp.19-21.

Edwards, H. (2012). UK NHS workforce reviews. Ultrasound, 20 (3), pp. 129-129.

Ham, C. (1996). Managed markets in health care: the UK experiment. Health Policy, 35(3), pp.279-292.

Krishna Regmi, S. (2013). Health Care Commissioning: The UK Health Policy Reforms. Prim Health Care, 03(02).

Ramsay, S. (1994). UK NHS complaints review. The Lancet, 343(8907), p.1219.

Thomson, R. (2004). UK, Quality Indicator Project (R) (UK QIP) and the UK independent health care sector: a new development. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 16(suppl_1), pp.i51-i56.

UK government to examine NHS prescribing. (1995). PharmacoResources, 21 (1), pp. 15-15.

UK. Better information for the UK public. (2003). International J Health Care QA, 16(1).

UK. Increased use of private healthcare sector. (2004). International J Health Care QA, 17(1).

Warden, J. (1994). New funding formula for the NHS. BMJ, 309(6962), pp.1109-1109.