Overview of Healthcare in The UK > 자유게시판

Received 2010 Sep 1; Accepted 2010 Sep 27; Issue date 2010 Dec.

. The National Health System in the UK has developed to turn into one of the largest healthcare systems in the world. At the time of writing of this review (August 2010) the UK federal government in its 2010 White Paper "Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS" has revealed a method on how it will "produce a more responsive, patient-centred NHS which attains results that are among the very best worldwide". This review post provides a summary of the UK health care system as it presently stands, with emphasis on Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine aspects. It intends to act as the basis for future EPMA articles to broaden on and provide the changes that will be executed within the NHS in the forthcoming months.

Keywords: UK, Healthcare system, National health system, NHS

Introduction

The UK health care system, National Health Service (NHS), came into presence in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended up being operational on the fifth July 1948. It was first proposed to the Parliament in the 1942 Beveridge Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services and it is the tradition of Aneurin Bevan, a former miner who ended up being a politician and the then Minister of Health. He founded the NHS under the principles of universality, free at the point of shipment, equity, and paid for by main funding [1] Despite various political and organisational modifications the NHS remains to date a service readily available generally that takes care of people on the basis of need and not ability to pay, and which is funded by taxes and nationwide insurance contributions.

Health care and health policy for England is the duty of the central government, whereas in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland it is the obligation of the respective devolved governments. In each of the UK countries the NHS has its own unique structure and organisation, but overall, and not dissimilarly to other health systems, health care consists of 2 broad areas; one dealing with technique, policy and management, and the other with real medical/clinical care which is in turn divided into main (community care, GPs, Dentists, Pharmacists etc), secondary (hospital-based care accessed through GP referral) and tertiary care (professional healthcare facilities). Increasingly distinctions in between the two broad sections are becoming less clear. Particularly over the last years and directed by the "Shifting the Balance of Power: The Next Steps" (2002) and "Wanless" (2004) reports, gradual changes in the NHS have caused a greater shift towards local instead of central decision making, elimination of barriers in between main and secondary care and more powerful emphasis on patient choice [2, 3] In 2008 the previous government reinforced this direction in its health strategy "NHS Next Stage Review: High Quality Care for All" (the Darzi Review), and in 2010 the current federal government's health strategy, "Equity and quality: Liberating the NHS", remains helpful of the same ideas, albeit through perhaps various systems [4, 5]

The UK federal government has simply announced strategies that according to some will produce the most extreme modification in the NHS considering that its beginning. In the 12th July 2010 White Paper "Equity and quality: Liberating the NHS", the present Conservative-Liberal Democrat union government described a technique on how it will "create a more responsive, patient-centred NHS which attains results that are among the best in the world" [5]

This review post will for that reason provide a summary of the UK health care system as it presently stands with the objective to work as the basis for future EPMA short articles to broaden and provide the changes that will be carried out within the NHS in the forthcoming months.