A health system, health care system or healthcare system is an organization of people, institutions, and resources that delivers health care services to meet the health needs of target populations.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for government policy on health and adult social care matters in England, along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherwise devolved to the Scottish Government, Welsh Government or Northern Ireland Executive. It oversees the English National Health Service (NHS). The department is led by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care with three ministers of state and three parliamentary under-secretaries of state.
Clinical governance is a systematic approach to maintaining and improving the quality of patient care within the National Health Service (NHS) and private sector health care. Clinical governance became important in health care after the Bristol heart scandal in 1995, during which an anaesthetist, Dr Stephen Bolsin, exposed the high mortality rate for paediatric cardiac surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. It was originally elaborated within the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS), and its most widely cited formal definition describes it as:
A framework through which NHS organisations are accountable for continually improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care will flourish.
Clinical audit is a process that has been defined as a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the implementation of change
NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) is a public body and national health board of NHSScotland.
A patient safety organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection, analysis, reporting, education, funding, and advocacy. A PSO differs from a Federally designed Patient Safety Organization (PSO), which provides health care providers in the U.S. privilege and confidentiality protections for efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of patient care delivery
The Health and Social Care Select Committee is a Departmental Select Committee of the British House of Commons, the lower house of the United Kingdom Parliament. Its remit is to examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and its associated agencies and public bodies. The Clerks of the Committee are Previn Desai and Joanna Dodd.
The Code for Sustainable Homes was an environmental assessment method for rating and certifying the performance of new homes in United Kingdom. First introduced in 2006, it is a national standard for use in the design and construction of new homes with a view to encouraging continuous improvement in sustainable home building. In 2015 the Government in England withdrew it, consolidating some standards into Building Regulations.
Biomedical waste or hospital waste is any kind of waste containing infectious materials generated during the treatment of humans or animals as well as during research involving biologics. It may also include waste associated with the generation of biomedical waste that visually appears to be of medical or laboratory origin, as well research laboratory waste containing biomolecules or organisms that are mainly restricted from environmental release. As detailed below, discarded sharps are considered biomedical waste whether they are contaminated or not, due to the possibility of being contaminated with blood and their propensity to cause injury when not properly contained and disposed. Biomedical waste is a type of biowaste.
According to the World Bank income level classification, Portugal is considered a high income country. In 2022, Portugal registered a total of 10,270,873 inhabitants with a expected decrease of 9.8% to 9,261,313 by 2050. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 12.3% of the population is between 0-14 years, 68.2% is estimated to be 15-64 years and 19.5% is expected to be 65+ years old.
Sir Andrew Paul Haines, FMedSci is a British epidemiologist and academic. He was the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2001 to 2010.
WASH is a sector in development cooperation, or within local governments, that provides water, sanitation, and hygiene services to communities. The main purposes of providing access to WASH services are to achieve public health gains, implement the human right to water and sanitation, reduce the burden of collecting drinking water for women, and improve education and health outcomes at schools and healthcare facilities. Access to WASH services is an important component of water security. Universal, affordable, and sustainable access to WASH is a key issue within international development, and is the focus of the first two targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6. Targets 6.1 and 6.2 aim for equitable and accessible water and sanitation for all. In 2017, it was estimated that 2.3 billion people live without basic sanitation facilities, and 844 million people live without access to safe and clean drinking water. The acronym WASH is used widely by non-governmental organizations and aid agencies in developing countries.
Jeffrey Braithwaite BA [UNE], DipIR, MIR [Syd], MBA [Macq], PhD [UNSW], FIML, FACHSM, FAAHMS, FFPHRCP [UK], FAcSS [UK], Hon FRACMA is an Australian professor, health services and systems researcher, writer and commentator, with an international profile and affiliations. He is Founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; Director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science, Australian Institute of Health Innovation; Professor of Health Systems Research, Macquarie University. His is Immediate Past President of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare.
The Sustainable Development Unit (SDU) was a British government agency with the purpose of embedding the principles of sustainable development, social value and the wider determinants of health across the health and social care system in England. In July 2022, as part of 'net zero' plans for the NHS, the SDU was replaced with the Greener NHS National Programme.
Health care quality is a level of value provided by any health care resource, as determined by some measurement. As with quality in other fields, it is an assessment of whether something is good enough and whether it is suitable for its purpose. The goal of health care is to provide medical resources of high quality to all who need them; that is, to ensure good quality of life, cure illnesses when possible, to extend life expectancy, and so on. Researchers use a variety of quality measures to attempt to determine health care quality, including counts of a therapy's reduction or lessening of diseases identified by medical diagnosis, a decrease in the number of risk factors which people have following preventive care, or a survey of health indicators in a population who are accessing certain kinds of care.
Healthcare in Belize is provided through both public and private healthcare systems. The Ministry of Health (MoH) is the government agency responsible for overseeing the entire health sector and is also the largest provider of public health services in Belize. The MoH offers affordable care to a majority of Belizeans with a strong focus on providing quality healthcare through a range of public programs and institutions.
NHS Improvement (NHSI) was a non-departmental body in England, responsible for overseeing the National Health Service's foundation trusts and NHS trusts, as well as independent providers that provide NHS-funded care. It supported providers to give patients consistently safe, high quality, compassionate care within local health systems that are financially sustainable.
Environmental health policy is governmental action intended to prevent exposure to environmental hazards or to "eliminate the effects of exposure to environmental hazards".
The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC), also referred to as the Alliance, is an organisation in the United Kingdom of several major health institutions that give it a collective membership of over 650,000 people including doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals, with the aim to better public health by combatting climate change. It was founded in 2016 and its founding members include the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the British Medical Association (BMA), The Lancet, the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) and the Royal College of Physicians (RCP).
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the environment, with changes in human activity leading to temporary changes in air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and water quality. As the pandemic became a global health crisis in early 2020, various national responses including lockdowns and travel restrictions caused substantial disruption to society, travel, energy usage and economic activity, sometimes referred to as the "anthropause". As public health measures were lifted later in the pandemic, its impact has sometimes been discussed in terms of effects on implementing renewable energy transition and climate change mitigation.
