PATIENT'S VOICE IN NHS

Patient's Voice in NHS

Patient's Voice in NHS

Introduction

Britain's NHS is an example of how patients' voice has to be represented and supported and has been described as one of the greatest social achievements of the 20th Century, with its promise to provide free health care for the British people from cradle to grave. But times have changed since that NHS was set up in 1948. Today, the United Kingdom, other countries with an NHS, and most of the countries with NHI are constantly looking for ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their health care services.

The Need for NHS

The adavent of the NHS coincided with rapid innovations in health technology and pharmaceutical development; antibiotics, improved anesthetics, cortisone, drugs for mental illness, and antihistamines were approved, and radiology technology continued to advance. Significant medical advances were occurring in the fight against tuberculosis and other infectious diseases as well (www.sochealth.co.uk). Although this boded well for improved healthcare, it also escalated the operating costs of the NHS from its inception. To add to this financial burden, the cost of new and improved medical treatments for heart and lung diseases and hip replacements—many of which were never even considered as possible during the decades leading up to the founding of the NHS—caused the NHS operational costs to skyrocket. Within three years, minor fees began to be charged for patients for some services to offset the costs of the NHS. For example, people needing prescription medicines were charged 1s (shilling), starting in 1952, while dental visits began costing patients £1 (news.bbc.co.uk).

Under this law, health authorities stopped directly managing hospitals and coordinating healthcare services; instead, they gave operational funding to the independently run NHS trusts, which created an atmosphere wherein competition could provide more choice to patients and, it was hoped, inequities would be corrected (Patricia, 2005). By 1995, the NHS trust system was entirely in place. Some physicians were also given budgets along with the authority to purchase healthcare services from the NHS structure and private healthcare entities; this was called GP (general practitioner) fund holding. It was found that physicians who participated in this system could access healthcare services for their patients more quickly than those who elected not to do so, bringing about criticism that the healthcare system was once again inequitable and two-tiered, divided between the have and the have-not populations.

Since 2000, the number of people employed by the NHS has increased from 1 million to 1.4 million, making it the fifth largest organisation in the world (first is the Chinese People's Liberation Army at 2.3 million; the U. S. Department of Defense comes in second at 2 million; the Indian Railways and Wal-Mart, each at 1.5 million, tie for third (and fourth); and then the NHS at fifth). Some critics say that the system is still understaffed and that 10,000 more physicians will be needed to fulfill the upcoming needs, but the head of the NHS calls the service the largest army in the world doing ...