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The National Care Standards are a set of standards for care services in Scotland.
They were set up by the Scottish Government, as required by the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001. The standards were devised after consultation with service providers, service users, various expert bodies and individuals, and the public. The standards are subject to regular review and revision as necessary.
The National Care Standards are used by service providers to maintain and improve the quality of services provided. The Care Inspectorate is also required by law to apply them when regulating care services.
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Emergency medical services (EMS), also known as ambulance services or paramedic services, are emergency services that provide urgent pre-hospital treatment and stabilisation for serious illness and injuries and transport to definitive care. They may also be known as a first aid squad, FAST squad, emergency squad, ambulance squad, ambulance corps, life squad or by other initialisms such as EMAS or EMARS.
An emergency medical technician (EMT), also known as an ambulance technician, is a health professional that provides emergency medical services. EMTs are most commonly found working in ambulances. In English-speaking countries, paramedics are a separate profession that has additional educational requirements, qualifications, and scope of practice.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a United States federal statute enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1996. It modernized the flow of healthcare information, stipulates how personally identifiable information maintained by the healthcare and healthcare insurance industries should be protected from fraud and theft, and addressed some limitations on healthcare insurance coverage. It generally prohibits healthcare providers and healthcare businesses, called covered entities, from disclosing protected information to anyone other than a patient and the patient's authorized representatives without their consent. With limited exceptions, it does not restrict patients from receiving information about themselves. It does not prohibit patients from voluntarily sharing their health information however they choose, nor – if they disclose medical information to family members, friends, or other individuals not a part of a covered entity – legally require them to maintain confidentiality.
Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks to eighteen years. Child care is a broad topic that covers a wide spectrum of professionals, institutions, contexts, activities, and social and cultural conventions. Early child care is an equally important and often overlooked component of child development.
Health insurance or medical insurance is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance is risk among many individuals. By estimating the overall risk of health risk and health system expenses over the risk pool, an insurer can develop a routine finance structure, such as a monthly premium or payroll tax, to provide the money to pay for the health care benefits specified in the insurance agreement. The benefit is administered by a central organization, such as a government agency, private business, or not-for-profit entity.
Two-tier healthcare is a situation in which a basic government-provided healthcare system provides basic care, and a secondary tier of care exists for those who can pay for additional, better quality or faster access. Most countries have both publicly and privately funded healthcare, but the degree to which it creates a quality differential depends on the way the two systems are managed, funded, and regulated.
The term managed care or managed healthcare is used in the United States to describe a group of activities intended to reduce the cost of providing health care and providing American health insurance while improving the quality of that care. It has become the predominant system of delivering and receiving American health care since its implementation in the early 1980s, and has been largely unaffected by the Affordable Care Act of 2010.
...intended to reduce unnecessary health care costs through a variety of mechanisms, including: economic incentives for physicians and patients to select less costly forms of care; programs for reviewing the medical necessity of specific services; increased beneficiary cost sharing; controls on inpatient admissions and lengths of stay; the establishment of cost-sharing incentives for outpatient surgery; selective contracting with health care providers; and the intensive management of high-cost health care cases. The programs may be provided in a variety of settings, such as Health Maintenance Organizations and Preferred Provider Organizations.
General medical services (GMS) is the range of healthcare that is provided by general practitioners as part of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. The NHS specifies what GPs, as independent contractors, are expected to do and provides funding for this work through arrangements known as the General Medical Services Contract. Today, the GMS contract is a UK-wide arrangement with minor differences negotiated by each of the four UK health departments. In 2013 60% of practices had a GMS contract as their principle contract. The contract has sub-sections and not all are compulsory. The other forms of contract are the Personal Medical Services or Alternative Provider Medical Services contracts. They are designed to encourage practices to offer services over and above the standard contract. Alternative Provider Medical Services contracts, unlike the other contracts, can be awarded to anyone, not just GPs, don't specify standard essential services, and are time limited. A new contract is issued each year.
NHS Scotland, sometimes styled NHSScotland, is the publicly funded healthcare system in Scotland, and one of the four systems which make up the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. It operates fourteen territorial NHS boards across Scotland, seven special non-geographic health boards and NHS Health Scotland.
A National Provider Identifier (NPI) is a unique 10-digit identification number issued to health care providers in the United States by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The NPI has replaced the Unique Physician Identification Number (UPIN) as the required identifier for Medicare services, and is used by other payers, including commercial healthcare insurers. The transition to the NPI was mandated as part of the Administrative Simplifications portion of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom provide emergency care to people with acute illness or injury and are predominantly provided free at the point of use by the four National Health Services (NHS) of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is only free to UK residents and a charge may be made to those not entitled to free NHS care. The NHS commissions most emergency medical services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK.
National Health Service ambulance services provide free at the point of use emergency medical care to any person requiring treatment, regardless of immigration or visitor status, within the United Kingdom. These services are provided by National Health Services of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The current system comprises 14 NHS organisations: 11 ambulance services trusts cover the separate regions of England and; individual nationwide services cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland respectively.
Special measures is a status applied by regulators of public services in Britain to providers who fall short of acceptable standards.
Hospital accreditation has been defined as “A self-assessment and external peer assessment process used by health care organizations to accurately assess their level of performance in relation to established standards and to implement ways to continuously improve”. Critically, accreditation is not just about standard-setting: there are analytical, counseling and self-improvement dimensions to the process. There are parallel issues in evidence-based medicine, quality assurance and medical ethics, and the reduction of medical error is a key role of the accreditation process. Hospital accreditation is therefore one component in the maintenance of patient safety. However, there is limited and contested evidence supporting the effectiveness of accreditation programs.
A clinical coder—also known as clinical coding officer, diagnostic coder, medical coder, or nosologist—is a health information professional whose main duties are to analyse clinical statements and assign standard codes using a classification system. The data produced are an integral part of health information management, and are used by local and national governments, private healthcare organizations and international agencies for various purposes, including medical and health services research, epidemiological studies, health resource allocation, case mix management, public health programming, medical billing, and public education.
Healthcare in Scotland is mainly provided by Scotland's public health service, NHS Scotland. It provides healthcare to all permanent residents free at the point of need and paid for from general taxation. Health is a matter that is devolved, and considerable differences have developed between the public healthcare systems in the countries of the United Kingdom, collectively the National Health Service (NHS). Though the public system dominates healthcare provision, private healthcare and a wide variety of alternative and complementary treatments are available for those willing and able to pay.
The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) was created in 1995 to implement universal health coverage in the Philippines. It is a tax-exempt, government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) of the Philippines, and is attached to the Department of Health. Its stated goal is to "ensure a sustainable national health insurance program for all", according to the company. In 2010, it claimed to have achieved "universal" coverage at 86% of the population, although the 2008 National Demographic Health Survey showed that only 38 percent of respondents were aware of at least one household member being enrolled in PhilHealth. Nevertheless, this social insurance program provides a means for the healthy to pay for the care of the sick and for those who can afford medical care to subsidize those who cannot. Both local and national governments allocate funds to subsidize the indigent.
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, abbreviated the HITECH Act, was enacted under Title XIII of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Under the HITECH Act, the United States Department of Health and Human Services resolved to spend $25.9 billion to promote and expand the adoption of health information technology. The Washington Post reported the inclusion of "as much as $36.5 billion in spending to create a nationwide network of electronic health records." At the time it was enacted, it was considered "the most important piece of health care legislation to be passed in the last 20 to 30 years" and the "foundation for health care reform."
India has a multi-payer universal health care model that is paid for by a combination of public and private health insurance funds along with the element of almost entirely tax-funded public hospitals. The public hospital system is essentially free for all Indian residents except for small, often symbolic co-payments in some services. At the federal level, a national publicly funded health insurance program was launched in 2018 by the Government of India, called Ayushman Bharat. This aimed to cover the bottom 50% of the country's population working in the unorganized sector and offers them free treatment at both public and private hospitals. For people working in the organized sector and earning a monthly salary of up to ₹21,000 are covered by the social insurance scheme of Employees' State Insurance which entirely funds their healthcare, both in public and private hospitals. People earning more than that amount are provided health insurance coverage by their employers through either one of the four main public health insurance funds which are the National Insurance Company, The Oriental Insurance Company, United India Insurance Company and New India Assurance or a private insurance provider. As of 2020, 300 million Indians are covered by insurance bought from one of the public or private insurance companies by their employers as group or individual plans. Indian nationals and foreigners who work in the public sector are eligible for a comprehensive package of benefits including, both public and private health, preventive, diagnostic, and curative services and pharmaceuticals with very few exclusions and no cost sharing. Most services including state of the art cardio-vascular procedures, organ transplants, and cancer treatments are covered. Employers are responsible for paying for an extensive package of services for private sector expatriates unless they are eligible for the Employees' State Insurance. Unemployed people without coverage are covered by the various state funding schemes for emergency hospitalization if they do not have the means to pay for it. In 2019, the total net government spending on healthcare was $36 billion or 1.23% of its GDP. India had allocated 1.8% of its GDP to health in 2020–21. Since the country's independence, the public hospital system has been entirely funded through general taxation.
The Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) is a standards-based network that replaced the N3 network in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. It went live in April 2017. Transition to the new network was completed by November 2020.