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The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health in England, which publishes guidelines in four areas:
General practice is the name given in various nations, such as the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, to the services provided by General practitioners. In some nations, such as the US, similar services may be described as family medicine or primary care. The term Primary Care in the UK may also include services provided by community pharmacy, optometrist, dental surgery and community hearing care providers. The balance of care between primary care and secondary care - which usually refers to hospital based services - varies from place to place, and with time. In many countries there are initiatives to move services out of hospitals into the community, in the expectation that this will save money and be more convenient.
For the service in Wales, see NHS Direct Wales
Polyclinics in England were intended to offer a greater range of services than were offered by current general practitioner (GP) practices and local health centres. In addition to traditional GP services they would offer extended urgent care, healthy living services, community mental health services and social care, whilst being more accessible and less medicalised than hospitals. A variety of models were proposed, ranging from networks of existing clinics to larger premises with several colocated general practitioner (GP) practices, more extensive facilities and additional services provided by allied healthcare professionals.
Primary care trusts (PCTs) were part of the National Health Service in England from 2001 to 2013. PCTs were largely administrative bodies, responsible for commissioning primary, community and secondary health services from providers. Until 31 May 2011 they also provided community health services directly. Collectively PCTs were responsible for spending around 80 per cent of the total NHS budget. Primary care trusts were abolished on 31 March 2013 as part of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, with their work taken over by clinical commissioning groups.
A quasi-market is a public sector institutional structure that is designed to reap the supposed efficiency gains of free markets without losing the equity benefits of traditional systems of public administration and financing.
The National Health Service (NHS) is the publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare system in the world after the Brazilian Sistema Único de Saúde. Primarily funded by the government from general taxation, and overseen by the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS provides healthcare to all legal English residents and residents from other regions of the UK, with most services free at the point of use. Some services, such as emergency treatment and treatment of infectious diseases, are free for everyone, including visitors.
Healthcare in Britain is mainly provided by the National Health Service, a public body that provides healthcare to all permanent residents of the United Kingdom that is free at the point of use and paid for from general taxation. Since health is a devolved matter, there are differences with the provisions for healthcare elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Though the public system dominates healthcare provision in Britain, private health care and a wide variety of alternative and complementary treatments are available for those willing to pay.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provides for the most extensive reorganisation of the structure of the National Health Service in England to date. It removed responsibility for the health of citizens from the Secretary of State for Health, which the post had carried since the inception of the NHS in 1948. It abolished NHS primary care trusts (PCTs) and Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) and transferred between £60 billion and £80 billion of "commissioning", or health care funds, from the abolished PCTs to several hundred "clinical commissioning groups", partly run by the general practitioners (GPs) in England but a major point of access for private service providers. A new executive agency of the Department of Health, Public Health England, was established under the Act on 1 April 2013.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are NHS organisations set up by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to organise the delivery of NHS services in England. The announcement that GPs would take over this commissioning role was made in the 2010 white paper "Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS". This was part of the government's advertised desire to create a clinically-driven commissioning system that was more sensitive to the needs of patients. The 2010 white paper became law under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 in March 2012. At the end of March 2013 there were 211 CCGs.
Out-of-hours services are the arrangements to provide access to healthcare at times when General Practitioner surgeries are closed; in the United Kingdom this is normally between 6.30pm and 8am, at weekends, at Bank Holidays and sometimes if the practice is closed for educational sessions.
GP Fundholding was created in 1991 as part of the quasi-market created in the National Health Service by the Thatcher Government's National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. It has some similarities to the role played by clinical commissioning groups in the reforms of the English NHS following from the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Individual general practices were given control over some of the budgets for hospital care for their patients. This enabled them to change hospital practices by, in some cases, getting hospital consultants to run sessions outside hospital.
Healthcare in London, which consumes about a fifth of the NHS budget in England, is in many respects distinct from that in the rest of the United Kingdom, or England.
The Five Year Forward View was produced by NHS England in October 2014 under the leadership of Simon Stevens as a planning document.
Healthcare in Dorset is now the responsibility of Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group. Dorset County Council is leading in the development of an electronic health record, to be called the Dorset Care Record, provided by Orion Health. It is intended to enable all health and social care providers to share records.
Healthcare in Devon is now the responsibility of the two Clinical Commissioning Groups, one covering Northern, Eastern and Western Devon, and one covering South Devon and Torbay. It was announced in November 2018 that the two were to merge.
Healthcare in Sussex was the responsibility of seven Clinical Commissioning Groups covering: Brighton and Hove; Coastal West Sussex; Horsham and Mid Sussex; Crawley; Eastbourne Hailsham and Seaford; Hastings and Rother; High Weald; and Lewes-Havens from 2013 to 2020. From April 2020 they will be merged into three covering East Sussex, West Sussex, and Brighton and Hove.
Healthcare in Greater Manchester is mainly provided by the Greater Manchester element of England's public health service, the National Health Service (NHS). This care is provided to all permanent residents of the United Kingdom, free at the point of use and paid for from general taxation from a variety of hospitals, clinics and other public care settings, with private and voluntary services operating and funded independently. The “Greater Manchester Model” of NHS health care is a system uniquely devolved within England, by way of close integration with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and local authorities, with a vision led by the Mayor of Greater Manchester.
Healthcare in the West Midlands is now the responsibility of five Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG): Birmingham and Solihull; Sandwell and West Birmingham; Dudley; Wolverhampton; and Walsall.
The NHS internal market was established by the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. Before that healthcare in the United Kingdom was provided by health authorities which were given a budget to run hospitals and community health services in their area. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 was intended to open up the internal market to external competition.