The national health service in the United Kingdom-past, present and future

Abstract

Britain's National Health Service (NHS) came into existence in 1948. It was the first comprehensive health system in any Western society to be based on the national provision of services and to offer free medical care to the entire population. The NHS has gone through several developments since, in particular the reorganisations of 1974 and 1982 and the general management overhaul of 1984. Until 1991, however, the NHS kept to the following principles: health service for everyone; sharing of financial costs and free at the point of use; geographical equality; the same high standard of care for everyone; selection on the basis of need for health care; and encouragement of a non-exploitative ethos. Britain's achievement with respect to health care has generally received high praise. Nevertheless, Mrs. Thatcher's government was convinced that the NHS contained a number of serious weakness. This view sprang from the government's belief that, because the NHS did not have a competitive market structure, it lacked an incentive for efficient behaviour. The reforms that were introduced in 1991 were designed to overcome these perceived flaws by creating a limited or internal market in health care, in which multiple providers of services compete with each other for the custom of independent purchasers. Competitive pressures now focus greater attention on patient needs, and the separation of purchasing functions has placed resource allocation under greater scrutiny. Making hospitals financially dependent on general practitioner (GP) referrals has resulted in consultants establishing closer contact with GPs. More is being done in GP surgeries and this has the effect not only of widening the range of general practice but also of raising GP standards. However, there are also some internal problems. Administrative costs have increased steeply, and new inequalities are developing as a consequence of competition. To reduce management costs and to allocate as much of the NHS budget as possible to direct patient care, the government produced and made public its plans for the future structure of NHS management in 1993 and a simplified structure is expected to go into effect by 1996. The Labour Party's document on health and health services in Britain was made public in 1994. The plan rejects the use of competition in the NHS and promises to reverse recent developments, reasserting the importance of the original principles of the NHS. It is too early to reach a verdict on the British experiment. Given the direction of change in Labour's thinking and the fact that the current reforms by the Conservatives are becoming more and more firmly embedded, almost anything is possible.