“Medical treatment covering all requirements will be provided for all citizens by a national health service”

Sir William Beveridge (1942) Social Insurance and Allied Services (The Beveridge Report)

 

 

For over 70 years the Health Care Services in England have been under the political scope through a never ending series of Acts and Bills. In 1942 the National Health Service (NHS) initiated a lengthy reform process, with the aim of providing better care to patients, which, nowadays, still looms, unnacomplished, over it.

How patient focused is our healthcare service?

 

In 2014 ‘The Five Year Forward View’ was formulated to outline the need to revise the NHS in the coming years. This report was set to reduce health inequalities and enhance the quality of care. In response to it Nuffield Trust Chief Nigel Edwards highlighted that, without a sustainable long term funding plan, the proposed solution would result in a temporary fix as the NHS financial situation is quite precarious.

 

How sturdy is the National Healthcare Service economy?

 

 “£600m of the NHS England’s 'extra' £8bn will be funded through cuts from public health – a move which sits uncomfortably with the Chancellor’s claims to have delivered 'in full' the Forward View.”

(Gainsbury, 2015)

 

On ‘Analysis of Spending Review’ 2015, Sally Gainsbury raises new questions as to how much of an effective solution it would be to apply cuts on the public health sector. As pointed out by Chancellor George Osborne, in his statement (Gov.uk, 2015) by reducing 25% of the Whitehall Budget for the Department of Health, homecare services would greatly suffer as “those whose needs are considered severe enough to receive state support, mostly in the community, would be excluded from an already tightly rationed system” (Dayan, 2015). It can be argued that this arrangement would increase existing financial and logistic pressures in the NHS. Services such as A&E would be, yet again, stretched beyond its limits and other departments, namely the wards, would be unable to free up its beds due to a lack of resources in the community to address the patients’ needs.