NHS IN 1948

NHS In 1948

NHS In 1948

Introduction

The history of the NHS is that of an organisation established after a century's discussion on the provision of health services to meet a long recognised need. It appeared at a time when Britain saw health care as crucial to one of the "five giants" (want, disease, squalor, ignorance, idleness) that Beveridge declared should be slain during post-war reconstruction. The cataclysm of war provided an opportunity that might not have been taken in quieter times. the NHS was noble in conception, and has been faced on the one side with ever increasing costs as a result of advances in medical knowledge, medicines and technology, and on the other with the financial restrictions inevitable in a centrally funded service with changing management dogmas and political beliefs. Whether knowing what we know now Britain would follow the same pathway is anyone's guess.

Discussion

Below you will find a quick and simplified over-view. You may find the link to the inheritance of the NHS is useful for this provides the text of the book's introductory chapter. The links to 1948-1957, 1958-1967, 1968-1977, 1978-1987 and 1988-1997 provide the text of the book, 1998-2007 the last decade and 2008-2117 to the decade now begun. Two links give financial information over the years, earlier and later periods.

More information on the factors that led to the creation of the NHS is to be found in Geoffrey Rivett's earlier book on the Development of the London Hospital System, This short account of the chronological time line, for simplicity's sake, is mainly about England, though more detailed texts are available on this site and in hard copy [1] How we came to have a health service. Others have written extensively on the reasons for a health service. These included

The emergence of a view that health care was a right, not something bestowed erratically by charity

Bipartisan agreement that the existing services were in a mess and had to be sorted out

Financial difficulties for the voluntary hospitals

The second world war that ensured the creation of an emergency medical service as part of the war effort

The cataclysmic effects of the war that made it possible to have a massive change of system, rather than incremental modification

An increasing view among the younger members of the medical profession that there was a better way of doing things

The genesis of the NHS stretched back into the 19th Century. Even then some believed that access to health care was part of the structure of a civilized society. Some municipalities, such as the London County Council, had the ambition to run hospitals as well as utilities. Hospital charities had been supported by the benevolent while socialists such as the Webbs argued for a state system or the insurance principle - pay in advance when well to provide for the care needed when sick.

In the First World War the army medical services had shown the benefits of organisation and transport. At the government's request in 1920 Lord Dawson produced a ...