Healthcare in England
[1] Though the public system dominates healthcare provision in England, private health care and a wide variety of alternative and complementary treatments are available for those willing and able to pay.
The Secretary serves as the principal adviser to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on all health matters.
[3] The NHS uses General Practitioners (GPs) to provide primary healthcare and to make referrals to further services as necessary.
Hospitals then provide more specialist services, including care for patients with psychiatric illnesses, as well as direct access to Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments.
Community pharmacies are privately owned but have contracts with the national health service to supply prescription drugs.
[5] Dental care is free for patients under 18 years old (19 if still in full-time education), with certain medical conditions, on low incomes or in receipt of welfare benefits.
[5] In England, a fixed NHS prescription charge is payable for up to a three-month supply of each item (£9.35 as of April 2022[update]), regardless of actual cost.
[7] There are many exemptions from the charge, including patients under 16 years old (18 if still in full-time education), over 60, with certain medical conditions, on low incomes or in receipt of welfare benefits.
Commissioning trusts negotiate service delivery with providers that may be NHS bodies or private entities.
Because hospitals tend to provide more complex and specialised care, they receive the lion's share of NHS funding.
Primary care is delivered by a wide range of independent contractors such as GPs, dentists, pharmacists and optometrists and is the first point of contact for most people.
Health Education England is responsible for ensuring enough high-quality training is available to develop the healthcare workforce.
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, all NHS bodies, private and voluntary sector providers supplying NHS services, and local authorities in the exercise of their public health functions are required by law to take account of the constitution in their decisions and actions.
The NHS is founded on a common set of principles and values that bind together the communities and people it serves – patients and public – and the staff who work for it.
If the GP judges the case to be extremely urgent, the doctor may by-pass the normal booking system and arrange an emergency admission.
[19] Trusts are working towards an 18-week guarantee that means that the hospital must complete all tests and start treatment within 18 weeks of the date of the referral from the GP.
Some hospitals are introducing just in time workflow analysis borrowed from manufacturing industry to speed up the processes within the system and improve efficiencies.
Waiting times can be up to 4 hours if a patient goes to the Emergency Department with a minor problem or may be referred to other agencies (e.g. pharmacy, GP, Walk in clinic).
An independent survey conducted in 2004 found that users of the NHS often expressed very high levels of satisfaction about their personal experience of the medical services they received.
Where more people had no recent experience of that service, the difference in net positive perception reported by users compared to non-users was more likely to diverge.
[26] The Royal College of General Practitioners has been actively involved on an international level to help family medicine doctors have access to "contextually relevant training and development programmes".
[29] The BMA has a range of representative and scientific committees and is recognised by National Health Service employers as the sole contract negotiator for doctors.
[30] The Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) is one of the major providers of accredited postgraduate medical education in England.
Founded by royal charter from King Henry VIII in 1518, the RCP is the oldest medical college in England.
It set the first international standard in the classification of diseases, and its library contains medical texts of great historical interest.
[34] There are many medical associations and national specialist societies in England, promoting knowledge, science, and healthcare research.
All leading medical schools in England are state-funded and their core purpose is to train doctors on behalf of the National Health Service.
Private health care is sometimes funded by employers through medical insurance as part of a benefits package to employees though it is mostly the larger companies that do.
The Care Quality Commission, after inspecting more than 200 private sector hospitals, warned in April 2018 that informality in processes meant that systematic and robust safety procedures were not in place.
