Briefing Note on NHS Highland for New Staff Members
National Health Service Highland (NHS Highland) is a public sector organisation and is classed as being in the Tertiary Sector as it provides a service to the public rather than producing a tangible product. NHS Highland serves a population of approximately 310,000 residents and provides a wide range of services across the largest land area (~40%) of any health authority in Scotland.
NHS Highland is managed by a Board of Executive and Non-Executive Directors and is accountable to the Scottish Government through the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing.
The main services provided by NHS Highland are: Healthcare, in the form of General Practitioner Surgeries, Hospital
…show more content…
The key elements of the Highland Quality Approach are summarised in the blue triangle and include the Mission Statement, Vision and Values. It also describes how services and care will look in the future in addition to how the approach may change the way that services and care are delivered.”
Fig1
External Factors that have an impact on business activities of the organisation are:
Political - In the event of a future YES vote in an Independence Referendum for Scotland, or in case of further devolved powers for Scottish Government to control NHS Scotland’s budget, rather than being part of a wider UK budget, the Scottish Government would decide the overall budget of NHS Scotland and the areas in which it is spent. This would be dependent on the Scottish Economy, which at present is an unknown entity.
Economic - Exchange Rates, costs of pharmaceutical product sourced out with the European Union (EU). If Sterling is weak in relation to the US Dollar, the cost of purchasing pharmaceutical products could be greater and cause a reduction in spend elsewhere in the organisation. Currently, five of the World’s top ten pharmaceutical companies are US- based.
Socio-cultural - The Office for National Statistics (ONS) state that, since 1964, the population of the UK has grown by over ten million (about half of this growth has occurred since 2001), in addition the average age of a UK citizen has increased by four years. This means that not only does NHS
Their aims are to aid people who are applicable to use their service. They are non-profit and are Governmental, which means that the Government funds the NHS by using a portion tax-payers’ money.
not quite right occurring within the trust. The NHS care regulator soon became aware of the fact that Stafford seemed to
The NHS system in Scotland has had an integrated structure since 2004 yet local authorities continue to take on the responsibility of social care. A few years’ later Wales followed Scotland in 2009 with the formation of unified local health boards (Goodman, 2012). The Government has specified that it is dedicated to making evidence based integrated care. In 2014 they planned to invest £1 billion through the ‘Better Care Fund’. This intends to link up health and social care services between the NHS and local authorities (Glasby, 2016). The aim is to allow more people to be cared for in the community and ultimately save the health care money. Different areas are progressing at different levels with levels of ambition ranging (Glasby, 2012). The Kings Fund (2011) stated that they believe the NHS commissioning board and the Department of Health need to dedicate urgent priority to investing in approaches that measure the experiences of patients, carers and service users in relation to integrated
One of the strengths of the NHS England is residents receive free fully funded medical care that includes all medical treatment, screenings including antenatal, dental, prescriptions, specialist referrals and optometrists (NHS England, 2016). Furthermore, while being free at point of access, the NHS system is an efficient, effective, care, safe, coordinated and patient centred system that was ranked number two worldwide on equity (NHS England, 2016). Free healthcare supports Ham 's (2010) claim that being free at point of entry is a characteristic of a high performing health care system. The benefits of free healthcare were that everyone was able to get the same medical treatment.
The NHS came around in July 5, 1948. The Health Minister Aneurin (also known as Nye) Bevan purely nationalised the existing system across the UK. The groundbreaking change was to make all services freely available to everyone. Half of Scotland’s landmass was already covered by a state-funded health system serving the entire community and directly run from Edinburgh. Additionally, the war years had seen a state-funded hospital building programme in Scotland on a scale unknown in Europe. This was combined into the new NHS. Scotland also had its own individual medical tradition, this is centred on its medical schools rather than private practice. The legislation that empowered the UK to have the NHS is National Health Service Act (1948), this despite opposition from doctors, who maintained on the right to continue treating some patients privately. The NHS ensured that Doctors, hospital, dentists, opticians, ambulances, midwives and health visitors were available, free to everybody. This Reason why we have health services is because it developments a view that health care was a right, not something given unreliably by charity, also two-party’s agreement that the existing services were in a mess and had to be sorted out, it stopped financial difficulties for the voluntary hospitals and After the second world war it ensured the creation of an emergency medical service as part of the war effort
According to (LabourList, 2013) today the NHS is 69 and one fact above all others amazes its critics on the Right: it remains the only health system in the G8 providing decent, comprehensive health cover to a whole population for less than 10% of GDP.
Starting with the organizational structure of the NHS, it is basically an umbrella organization that comprises of four regional branches, in particular, NHS (England), NHS Scotland, Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland and NHS Wales. The financing for all these institutions comes from a universal source, particularly the tax-payer money of residents of UK, although they operate to an extent as self-governing institutions. The treasury allocates money to the department of Health, which in turn allocates money to NHS England (Understanding the new NHS). In other words, the top executives of these four institutions take decisions independently for day to day operations although they abide by broader governing directives applicable to the UK region as a whole. Governance is an important aspect of the operating of the NHS, for without it exploitation by private vested interests is likely to happen. (National Health Service (NHS): A study of its Structure, Funding and Regulation, Strengths and Weaknesses, n.d.)
The National health services (NHS) provides a comprehensive healthcare services across the entire nation. It is considered to be UK’s proudest institution, and is envied by many other countries because of its free of cost health delivery to its population. Nevertheless, it is often seen as a ‘political football’ as it affects all of us in some way and hence everyone carry an opinion about it (Cass, 2006). Factors such as government policies, funding, number of service users, taxation etc all make up small parts of this large complex organisation. Therefore, any imbalances within one sector can pose a substantial risk on the overall NHS (Wheeler & Grice, 2000). This essay will discuss whether the NHS aim of reducing the nations need
brought about major change in how hospital and GP services were managed. The NHS nationalised health services but local councils still ran a variety of clinics and services for children. Soon after prescription charges were introduced. The NHS helped to organise hospital services so that areas that were lacking could be identified.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 came into force with crucial principles including new structures and arrangements in health care services to safeguard and strengthen the future of NHS and maintain the modernisation plan. In this Act, many new changes has been made to a number of existing Acts, National Health Services Act (NHS 2006), in order to enable health care system to tackle the existing challenges and also avoid any potential crisis in future. It has also introduced the proper allocation of NHS fund and budget, and improved the integrated care between NHS and social care services to promote patients’ choice in terms of delivering quality care.
The NHS provides many benefits to its residents in the UK. Specific benefits include the cost, care and coverage of the system.
The National Health Service (NHS) was planned as a three-tier structure. With the Minister of Health at the top and below were the three tiers designed to interact with each other to suit the needs of the patient. These tiers were voluntary and municipal hospitals supervised by Regional hospital boards, family doctors, dentists, opticians and pharmacists who were self-employed professionals contracted to the NHS to provide services so that patients did not pay directly and local health authorities like community clinics that provided services such as immunisations, maternity care and school medical services controlled by a local authority Medical Health. The NHS in England is undergoing some big changes, most of which took effect on April 1 2013. This included the abolition of primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic health authorities (SHAs), and the introduction of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and Health watch England.
Such services are funded by the government where a national budget is set via the Scottish Executive. Currently the local government is making changes to delivering public services to
The United Kingdom utilizes a national health service. This service is government owned and controlled. Most practitioners are employees of the government and hospitals are government run. Taxes provide nearly 80% of the funding for their health program. The remainders of the cost are covered by employee and employer contributions. Most providers and hospitals are public, although there is a small but growing private sector. The citizens of the United Kingdom pay nothing for visits to their physician or hospital stays. They also can choose which providers they want to visit and have “good access to primary care” (Hohman, 2006). The United Kingdom ranked number 18 in overall healthcare (WHO 2000) while spending only 8.4% of its gross domestic product (Kaiser EDU). In a recent poll, 79% of UK citizens “agreed that the NHS provided them with good service” (Health Science Journal, 2009).
It also monitors the quality of services provided and develops new policies. The performance of the NHS is also monitored by the Health-Care Commission, an independent executive agency that performs annual reviews and ratings, and investigates complaints.