British Health System

Main Principle: "there should be a free, comprehensive health service for everyone according to need, regardless of their income."₁

Overview

One major component of the health and social welfare system is the British healthcare system. The British healthcare system is called the National Health Service (NHS) , which is a publicly funded healthcare system. The NHS was formed in 1946 and officially went into effect in 1948. This system provides care in the areas of general practice, emergency, long-term care, and dentistry. One major characteristic of the NHS is that it actually employs the physicians and nurses and owns most of the hospitals and clinics. The NHS also pays directly for the health care expenses with prescriptions and dentistry being the two exceptions. In total the NHS has a yearly budget of Ł80 billion and employess over 1 million people making the NHS one of the top 5 largest employers of the world. The NHS is divided into 3 main categories; primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care.

Primary Care

Primary care includes services rendered by family doctors, dentists, opticians,pharmacists, midwives, speech therapists, physiotherapists, chiropodists, dieticians, and counsellors. Primary care is the first step in diagnosis, treatment, and prevantitive health and accounts for 90% of NHS services. Prevantitive health is a major component of primary care with emphasis on preventing heart disease, stroke, managing asthma, and diabetes. Often family doctors and nurses work together to form a Primary Care Group in a community.

Secondary Care

Secondary care is the second line of defense and deals with more advanced services such as elderly care, maternity care, pathology, and radiology. Secondary care is also responsible for emergency services including emergency rooms and ambulance services.

Tertiary Care

Tertiary Care is the last line of defense and deals with highly specialized areas such as organ transplants, and rare cancer treatment. Tertiary care services cover a broad geographical area and also include world famous hospitals and research facilities.

Technology

In recent years there has been a large push to renovate the NHS using Information Systems. This has lead to the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). However this program has been under heat for severe budget over-runs. The main problems have been the cost of acquiring all the hardware and software for $6 billion versus the cost of the complete change of ways estimated at close to $30 billion. There has also been concern over information security and privacy which can lead to over-restrictive controls which decrease quality of care.

"Open source technology is set to play a key role in the British National Health Service's sweeping plan to streamline operations and boost patient care."₃

The main components of the NPfIT are to build a secure broadband network to connect providers and hospitals all across the country. This will also allow patients to view information and book appointments online. There will also be a national electronic patient record (EPR) and an electronic prescription standard. Once in place the electronic patient record system, which will be called the Care Records Service, is expected to process 5 billion transactions per year.

The Sun Java Desktop System has been chosen in efforts to reduce software costs. There will first be a trial using this system and if successful it will replace Microsoft Windows on all 800,000 NHS computers. The Sun Java Desktop System is a Linux operating system using the GNOME desktop environment, StarOffice 7, Mozilla, and Ximian Evolution e-mail.

Pros and Cons

Like any healthcare system the NHS isn't perfect. The main positive aspect of the NHS is that everyone has an equal opportunity for treatment regardless of socioeconomic status. However, having such broad coverage comes at a cost. That cost adds up to long waiting lists for treatment and surgery. In fact the waiting lists have become so long the the NHS has started paying for people to cross into the European Union for treatment. The main reason for such long waiting lists is that there are really no restrictions placed on services rendered especially in the area of hospitalization. All in all the NHS is still a respected and world-renowned healthcare system.

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Dale Neufeld