I am very proud of living in the UK where there is a National Health Service (NHS) that is (more or less) free at the point of delivery. However, it is becoming widely acknowledged that the health service in England needs to change significantly if it is going to survive the next decade and beyond. The new chief executive of NHS England (Simon Stevens) has tried to tackle this head on and laid ...

OBJECTIVES To describe implementation of a new national preventive programme to reduce cardiovascular morbidity. DESIGN Observational study over 4 years (April 2009--March 2013). SETTING 655 general practices across England from the QResearch database. PARTICIPANTS Eligible adults aged 40-74 years including attendees at a National Health Service (NHS) Health Check. INTERVENTION NHS Heal...

BACKGROUND Most major public and private sector pension schemes have provision for ill-health retirement (IHR) for those who become too ill to continue to work before their normal retirement age. AIM To compare the causes, process and outcomes of IHR in teachers and National Health Service (NHS) staff in Scotland. METHODS A total of 537 teachers and 863 NHS staff who retired due to ill-heal...

The Varsity Medical Debate, between Oxford and Cambridge Universities, brings together practitioners and the public, professors, pupils and members of the polis, to facilitate discussion about ethics and policy within healthcare. The motion on privatizing the National Health Service (NHS) was specifically chosen to reflect the growing sentiment in the UK where further discourse upon models of h...

OBJECTIVE This paper explores the use of pharmacoeconomic methods of valuation to health impacts resulting from exposure to poor air quality. In using such methods, interventions that reduce exposure to poor air quality can be directly compared, in terms of value for money (or cost-effectiveness), with competing demands for finite resources, including other public health interventions. DESIGN...

Health policy will be a major issue in Britain’s next general election. The Labour government is committed to a substantial increase in funds for the National Health Service (NHS) and has eliminated tax relief for private health insurance. The Conservative Opposition party favors subsidizing private health insurance, though it has pledged to match the government’s funding increases for the NHS....

BACKGROUND The number of beds in care homes (with and without nurses) in the United Kingdom is three times greater than the number of beds in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals. Care homes are predominantly owned by a range of commercial, not-for-profit or charitable providers and their residents have high levels of disability, frailty and co-morbidity. NHS support for care home residents ...

As the National Health Service (NHS) enters a new decade in 2011, it faces one of its toughest financial periods ever. Despite NHS spending being protected from cuts, the equivalent of 0 per cent real growth (or thereabouts after adjusting for inflation) will mean the need to make efficiency savings of around 4 per cent per annum in order to close the estimated £20 billion productivity gap (App...

Recent disclosures of failures of care in the National Health Service (NHS) in England have led to debates about compassion deficits disallowing health professionals to provide high quality responsive care. While the link between high quality care and compassion is often taken for granted, it is less obvious how compassion - often originating in the individual's emotional response - can become ...