Hsm310 Unit 1 Research Paper
Health Status and Health Care Services in England with comparison to the United States
HSM310 Introduction to Health Services Management Course Project
Date submitted: August 23, 2012
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
Population and Health Status 5
Demographic characteristics of population
Mortality, Infant mortality data, causes of death
Other data of health status
Related information (such as on quality if life); analysis
Availability of Health Services 7
Basic organization/general description of services institutions, providers of care
Issues related to access
Utilization of services
Other related information/analysis
Expenditures 8
How are health services paid for; any roles for the government here
Data on total expenditures
Other related information/analysis …show more content…
Macroenvironmental influences on the health care system 8
Political
Socioeconomic
Cultural
Technological/Other relevant influences
Summary comments 10
Concluding comments: Lessons learned for the U. S., other countries
Bibliography 12
Executive Summary
The purpose of this paper is to compare the health care systems of two countries, the United States of America (US) and England. England is one of four countries that comprise the United Kingdom and functions within a public health care service system known as the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is delivered through and overseen by the British Government. The NHS was born out of an aspiration of the people of England and the British government that all people need good health care. Since its origin in 1948, the NHS has undergone many changes and developments by the British government. It is funded mainly through their national tax assessments. England’s Department of Health funds, directs and supports the NHS through Primary Care Trusts (PCT) and Strategic Health Authorities (SHA) .
Currently 62 million residents in the UK are eligible to receive free medical care that includes a range of services from routine visits with General Practitioner’s (GPs) , urgent care centers, hospitals, and other medical facilities. The mortality and morbidity rates compare relatively to the US with a rising life expectancy rate, similarly to a growing aging population, and the infant mortality continues to fall since the inception of the public health care system.
In the United States citizens gain access to health care services through various methods of delivery. The different sources of health care include an array of private health insurance companies and several government-subsidized entitlement programs. A nationwide public health system overseen by the federal Department of Health and Human Services provides health services locally through federal and state funding primarily for underserved communities, children and disabled persons. Reimbursement for health care services in the US is a complex organization of financing and regulations determined by the different health care plan organizational structures and commercial private insurance contractual agreements. Reimbursement to individual doctors and physicians, hospitals, government entitlement programs, private and commercial insurance providers occurs through several methods of managed care such as fee-for service, and capitation.
The US population at the beginning of 2012 was approximately 312 million people. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, reportedly 49.9 million people were uninsured in 2010, which is an increase of 0.9 million from 2009 . Although, the US has one of the most advanced medical systems, American’s impacted by poverty fall within the greatest number of people that go without health care insurance or access to good health care services. Additionally, due to an aging population and an economic down turn, the number of people covered by government health care services rose 31.0 percent in 2010, an increase of 0.4 percent from 2009 .
President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States signed into law a major health care reform initiative in March 2010. “The Affordable Care Act, puts in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that will hold insurance companies accountable, lower costs, guarantee choice, and enhance quality health care for all Americans” . The timeline to complete the United States health care reform will continue with implementing initiatives each year consecutively through to 2015.
Population and Health Status
The 2011 population of England was 53,012,500 people, a growth of approximately 3.7 million people in 10 years since the last census was taken in 2011.
. The population breaks down by gender with 49 percent males, 51 percent female. The median age of the population in England and Wales was 39. For men, the median age was 38 and for women it was 40. Of the total population of England 16% of the total population are people over the age of 65.
Infant mortality data in the UK: The provisional estimated number of conceptions in England and Wales in the first quarter of 2011 was 226,600 (rounded figures). This represents a small decrease of 4,300 conceptions in comparison with the previous quarter and a small decrease of 4,500 conceptions in comparison with the same quarter in 2010.
The fall in the number of conceptions for the first quarter of 2011 occurred in all age groups with the exception of women aged 40 and over.
The conception rate for England and Wales increased slightly from 82.8 conceptions per thousand women in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 83.0 conceptions per thousand women in the first quarter of
2011.
Conception rates increased in all age groups with the exception of women aged under 16, under 18, 20-24 and 25-29. (Office of National Statistics, 2012)
Causes of death: Total population death rate as reported in 2011 was for all causes Males 233,372; Females 248,792. For certain infectious and parasitic diseases Males 2,392; Females 3,018. Intestinal infectious diesases, Males 633; Females 1,158. The highest rate of deaths occurred in both females and males in the age range of 75-85 years old.
The population of the United States in 2011 was approximately 312 million people according to the U.S. Census Bureau website. Approximately 49 percent were males and 51 percent were females. The median age group was from 18 to 44 years old at the time of the 2011 census with 13 percent of the population over the age of 65 years old. Total number of deaths in the US as reported to the CDC in 2009 was 2,437,163.
Death rate: 793.8 deaths per 100,000 population
Life expectancy: 78.5 years
Infant Mortality rate: 6.39 deaths per 1,000 live births
The 4 Leading Causes of Deaths in the US:
Heart Disease: 599,413
Cancer: 567,628
Stroke: 128,842
Unintentional accidents: 118,021
The United Kingdom (UK) has been named the worst place to live in Europe for quality of life. The low quality of life is attributed to the UK having the second lowest hours of sunshine a year, the fourth highest retirement age, and the third lowest in expenditures on health as a percentage of its GDP, according to an article in The Guardian, dated September 28, 2011 by Mark King a journalist with the English newspaper.
According to an article in the International Living periodical dated January 3, 2011 by Dan Prescher, a journalist with the magazine, the US was rated with the “Top Spot” in the magazines Quality of Life Index 2011. There are nine Quality of Life index categories, cost of living, culture, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety and risk, and climate. “The U.S. has more paved roads than anywhere else, more airports and a lot of cell phones, It’s got good Internet access, the world’s biggest economy (though not necessarily the best), and it’s got tens of thousands of doctors and hospitals (if you can afford them). The numbers say: The United States has a convenience that’s hard to match” .
Availability of Services
The Department of Health provides strategic leadership for public health, the NHS and social care in England. The Department of Health’s purpose is to improve England’s health and well-being and in doing so achieve better health, better care, and better value for all. They set the strategic framework for adult social care and influence local authority spending on social care. They are also responsible for the direction on promoting and protecting the public’s health, taking the lead on issues such as environmental hazards to health, infectious diseases, health promotion and education, the safety of medicines, and ethical issues (Department of Health, 2012).
The NHS is divided into two sections: primary and secondary care. Primary care is the first point of contact for most people and is delivered by a wide range of independent contractors, including General Practitioners, dentists, pharmacists and optometrists. Primary care trusts (PCTs) are in charge of primary care and have a major role around commissioning secondary care, providing community care services. They are central to the NHS and control 80% of the NHS budget .
The United States’ health care system is funded through private insurance providers, public health systems and government entitlement programs. Individuals are responsible for paying for their own healthcare as members of a insurance program or 100% out of pocket expenses. Certain groups are eligible for government programs such as the indigent population, children, military families, retired persons and native american tribes.
Government spending includes federal government expenditures, particularly for the Medicare program and the federal share of the Medicaid program, as well as a variety of other activities, including the National Institutes of Health, the Public Health Service, the Indian Health Service, and the Veterans Administration. State and local government spending, which has increased substantially as well, includes the state share of Medicaid expenditures as well as a wide range of local services .
According to the Kaiser.edu website, health expenditures in the United States neared $2.6 trillion in 2010, over ten times the $256 billion spent in 1980. The rate of growth in recent years has slowed relative to the late 1990s and early 2000s, but is still expected to grow faster than national income over the foreseeable future. Addressing this growing burden continues to be a major policy priority. Furthermore, the United States has been in a recession for much of the past decade, resulting in higher unemployment and lower incomes for many Americans. These conditions have put even more attention on health spending and affordability .
Expenditures and Macroenvironmental Influences
The NHS is free for residents of England and the UK from the point of service for all health care services except for some prescriptions, optical and dental services of which charges are paid by the patients. When the NHS was launched in 1948 it had a budget of £437 million (roughly £9 billion at today’s value). The total healthcare expenditures for the UK in 2010 according to the Office of National Statistics was 140.8m£ of which 117.3m£ was for the pubic sector and 23.47m£ was for the private sector. The total percentage of the GDP of healthcare expenditure was 9.6 percent (Office of National Statistics, 2012). For 2011/12 it is around £106 billion .
U.S. health care spending grew 3.9 percent in 2010 following record slow growth of 3.8 percent in 2009; the two slowest rates of growth in the fifty-one year history of the National Health Expenditure Accounts. When total health expenditures reached $2.6 trillion, that translates to $8,402 per person or 17.9 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) .
The Department of Health has opened two new competitions with up to £2 million of funding each to develop technological and innovative solutions to tackle two major health challenges. The challenge is to change people’s behavior in order to reduce the impact of obesity and alcohol related diseases and improve the number of patients taking their medication as prescribed.
Alcohol and obesity related diseases cost the NHS over £7 billion each year and between 6-10 % of all hospital admissions could be preventable if prescription medication was taken correctly .
The onrush of increasingly sophisticated technology does not seem to be matched by an equal degree of advancement in medical services delivery in the US. Concerns about access, costs, assessment and evaluation, quality, and planning are constantly on the US agenda. The continuing evolution of health care in the United States follows a long-standing pattern of technical progress and complex delivery issues, which ultimately never seems to be adequately addressed to meet economic, social, political, and equity needs. But the increasing ability to intervene in the progression of disease, or to avert the occurrence of disease, suggests that the payoff from a more efficient and effective delivery system will be more substantial than ever before in our nation’s history .
Summary Comments
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tracks and reports on more than 1,200 health system measures across 34 industrialized countries. In their most recent report, they surmise that health care spending in the U.S. towers over the other countries.
The U.S. has fewer hospital beds and physicians, and sees fewer hospital and physician visits, than in most other countries. Prescription drug utilization, prices, and spending all appear to be highest in the U.S., as does the supply, utilization, and price of diagnostic imaging. U.S. per formance on a limited set of quality measures is variable, ranking highly on five-year cancer survival, middling on in-hospital case-specific mortality, and poorly on hospital admissions for chronic conditions and amputations due to diabetes. Findings suggest that there are opportunities for cross-national learning to improve health system performance. (Common Wealth Fund, 2011)
The NHS, like other healthcare systems, has never consistently and systematically measured changes in its patients’ health. As a result, it is impossible to say exactly how much the nation 's health improves for each pound spent by the NHS.
In the UK life expectancy has been rising and infant mortality has been falling since the NHS was established. Both figures compare favorably with other nations. Surveys also show that patients are generally satisfied with the care they receive from the NHS. Importantly, people who have had recent direct experience of the NHS tend to report being more satisfied than people who have not .
The most significant difference between the two health care systems is the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau reported 49.9 million people who are uninsured. This number is decidedly increasing due to the impact of the economic downturn in the US over the last six years and the resulting high unemployment rate. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act or Health Care Reform is still a mystery to most US citizens. There is a fear of the unknown among citizens young and old, and among small and large business owners due to the complex nature of the new health care system and the many unanswered questions about how it will change health care, as they have known it for decades. Additionally and more importantly, what will it do to facilitate access to health care for those who need it the most – the uninsured?
Bibliography
American Health Association. (2010). The US Health Care System 2010. AHA Journals.
American Public Health Association. (2003). Universal Health Care: Lessons from the British Experience. American Journal of Public Health .
AVERT. (2012). Who Has to Pay for NHS Treatment in the UK? Retrieved August 2012, from avert.org: http://www.avert.org/freenhs.htm
Centers for Disease and Prevention Control. (2009). FASTSTATS - Deaths and Mortality. Retrieved August 2012, from CDC.gov: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm/
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (2010). NationalHealthExpendData. Retrieved August 2012, from cms.gov: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf
Department of Health. (2012). About us | Department of Health. Retrieved August 2012, 2012, from dh.gov.uk: http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/about-us/
Department of Health. (n.d.). Public health, adult social care, and the NHS. Retrieved August 2012, from healthandcare.dh.gov.uk: http://healthandcare.dh.gov.uk/public-health-system/
DOH. (2012, May 18). 4 million for technological solutions to tackle healthcare problems | Department of Health. Retrieved August 2012, from dh.gov: http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/2012/03/sbri/
Guardian News and Media Limited. (2011, September 28). UK has worst quality of life in Europe. The Guardian .
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2012, January). U.S. Health Care Costs: Issue Modules, Background Brief - KaiserEDU.org. Retrieved August 2012, from KaiserEDU.org: http://www.kaiseredu.org/Issue-Modules/US-Health-Care-Costs/Background-Brief.aspx
National Health Service. (2012). About the NHS. Retrieved August 8, 2012, from nhs.uk: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/overview.aspx
NHS. (2011, October 24). The NHS structure. Retrieved August 22, 2012, from nhs.uk: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/nhsstructure.aspx
Office for National Statistics. (2011, June). 2011 Census. Retrieved August 2012, from ons.gov: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2012). OECD. Retrieved August 2012, from OECD.org: http://www.oecd.org/about/
Prescher, D. (2011, January 3). U.S. claims top spot in IL 's quality of life index 2011. International Living .
The Health Care Manager. (2007). A Comparative Analysis of the United Kingdom and the United States Health Care Systems. The Health Care Manager , 26 (Number 3), 190-212.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
WhiteHouse.gov. (2012, August). The Affordable Care Act - Implementation Timeline. Retrieved August 23, 2012, from whitehouse.gov: http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/timeline
WHO. (2012, April 2). More countries move towards universal health coverage. Retrieved August 2012, from World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2012/universal_health_coverage_20120402/en/
Williams, S. J. (2005). Essentials of Health Services (3 ed.). Clifton Park, NY: Cengage Delmar Learning.
HSM310 Introduction to Health Services Management Course Project
Date submitted: August 23, 2012
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
Population and Health Status 5
Demographic characteristics of population
Mortality, Infant mortality data, causes of death
Other data of health status
Related information (such as on quality if life); analysis
Availability of Health Services 7
Basic organization/general description of services institutions, providers of care
Issues related to access
Utilization of services
Other related information/analysis
Expenditures 8
How are health services paid for; any roles for the government here
Data on total expenditures
Other related information/analysis …show more content…
Macroenvironmental influences on the health care system 8
Political
Socioeconomic
Cultural
Technological/Other relevant influences
Summary comments 10
Concluding comments: Lessons learned for the U. S., other countries
Bibliography 12
Executive Summary
The purpose of this paper is to compare the health care systems of two countries, the United States of America (US) and England. England is one of four countries that comprise the United Kingdom and functions within a public health care service system known as the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is delivered through and overseen by the British Government. The NHS was born out of an aspiration of the people of England and the British government that all people need good health care. Since its origin in 1948, the NHS has undergone many changes and developments by the British government. It is funded mainly through their national tax assessments. England’s Department of Health funds, directs and supports the NHS through Primary Care Trusts (PCT) and Strategic Health Authorities (SHA) .
Currently 62 million residents in the UK are eligible to receive free medical care that includes a range of services from routine visits with General Practitioner’s (GPs) , urgent care centers, hospitals, and other medical facilities. The mortality and morbidity rates compare relatively to the US with a rising life expectancy rate, similarly to a growing aging population, and the infant mortality continues to fall since the inception of the public health care system.
In the United States citizens gain access to health care services through various methods of delivery. The different sources of health care include an array of private health insurance companies and several government-subsidized entitlement programs. A nationwide public health system overseen by the federal Department of Health and Human Services provides health services locally through federal and state funding primarily for underserved communities, children and disabled persons. Reimbursement for health care services in the US is a complex organization of financing and regulations determined by the different health care plan organizational structures and commercial private insurance contractual agreements. Reimbursement to individual doctors and physicians, hospitals, government entitlement programs, private and commercial insurance providers occurs through several methods of managed care such as fee-for service, and capitation.
The US population at the beginning of 2012 was approximately 312 million people. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, reportedly 49.9 million people were uninsured in 2010, which is an increase of 0.9 million from 2009 . Although, the US has one of the most advanced medical systems, American’s impacted by poverty fall within the greatest number of people that go without health care insurance or access to good health care services. Additionally, due to an aging population and an economic down turn, the number of people covered by government health care services rose 31.0 percent in 2010, an increase of 0.4 percent from 2009 .
President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States signed into law a major health care reform initiative in March 2010. “The Affordable Care Act, puts in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that will hold insurance companies accountable, lower costs, guarantee choice, and enhance quality health care for all Americans” . The timeline to complete the United States health care reform will continue with implementing initiatives each year consecutively through to 2015.
Population and Health Status
The 2011 population of England was 53,012,500 people, a growth of approximately 3.7 million people in 10 years since the last census was taken in 2011.
. The population breaks down by gender with 49 percent males, 51 percent female. The median age of the population in England and Wales was 39. For men, the median age was 38 and for women it was 40. Of the total population of England 16% of the total population are people over the age of 65.
Infant mortality data in the UK: The provisional estimated number of conceptions in England and Wales in the first quarter of 2011 was 226,600 (rounded figures). This represents a small decrease of 4,300 conceptions in comparison with the previous quarter and a small decrease of 4,500 conceptions in comparison with the same quarter in 2010.
The fall in the number of conceptions for the first quarter of 2011 occurred in all age groups with the exception of women aged 40 and over.
The conception rate for England and Wales increased slightly from 82.8 conceptions per thousand women in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 83.0 conceptions per thousand women in the first quarter of
2011.
Conception rates increased in all age groups with the exception of women aged under 16, under 18, 20-24 and 25-29. (Office of National Statistics, 2012)
Causes of death: Total population death rate as reported in 2011 was for all causes Males 233,372; Females 248,792. For certain infectious and parasitic diseases Males 2,392; Females 3,018. Intestinal infectious diesases, Males 633; Females 1,158. The highest rate of deaths occurred in both females and males in the age range of 75-85 years old.
The population of the United States in 2011 was approximately 312 million people according to the U.S. Census Bureau website. Approximately 49 percent were males and 51 percent were females. The median age group was from 18 to 44 years old at the time of the 2011 census with 13 percent of the population over the age of 65 years old. Total number of deaths in the US as reported to the CDC in 2009 was 2,437,163.
Death rate: 793.8 deaths per 100,000 population
Life expectancy: 78.5 years
Infant Mortality rate: 6.39 deaths per 1,000 live births
The 4 Leading Causes of Deaths in the US:
Heart Disease: 599,413
Cancer: 567,628
Stroke: 128,842
Unintentional accidents: 118,021
The United Kingdom (UK) has been named the worst place to live in Europe for quality of life. The low quality of life is attributed to the UK having the second lowest hours of sunshine a year, the fourth highest retirement age, and the third lowest in expenditures on health as a percentage of its GDP, according to an article in The Guardian, dated September 28, 2011 by Mark King a journalist with the English newspaper.
According to an article in the International Living periodical dated January 3, 2011 by Dan Prescher, a journalist with the magazine, the US was rated with the “Top Spot” in the magazines Quality of Life Index 2011. There are nine Quality of Life index categories, cost of living, culture, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety and risk, and climate. “The U.S. has more paved roads than anywhere else, more airports and a lot of cell phones, It’s got good Internet access, the world’s biggest economy (though not necessarily the best), and it’s got tens of thousands of doctors and hospitals (if you can afford them). The numbers say: The United States has a convenience that’s hard to match” .
Availability of Services
The Department of Health provides strategic leadership for public health, the NHS and social care in England. The Department of Health’s purpose is to improve England’s health and well-being and in doing so achieve better health, better care, and better value for all. They set the strategic framework for adult social care and influence local authority spending on social care. They are also responsible for the direction on promoting and protecting the public’s health, taking the lead on issues such as environmental hazards to health, infectious diseases, health promotion and education, the safety of medicines, and ethical issues (Department of Health, 2012).
The NHS is divided into two sections: primary and secondary care. Primary care is the first point of contact for most people and is delivered by a wide range of independent contractors, including General Practitioners, dentists, pharmacists and optometrists. Primary care trusts (PCTs) are in charge of primary care and have a major role around commissioning secondary care, providing community care services. They are central to the NHS and control 80% of the NHS budget .
The United States’ health care system is funded through private insurance providers, public health systems and government entitlement programs. Individuals are responsible for paying for their own healthcare as members of a insurance program or 100% out of pocket expenses. Certain groups are eligible for government programs such as the indigent population, children, military families, retired persons and native american tribes.
Government spending includes federal government expenditures, particularly for the Medicare program and the federal share of the Medicaid program, as well as a variety of other activities, including the National Institutes of Health, the Public Health Service, the Indian Health Service, and the Veterans Administration. State and local government spending, which has increased substantially as well, includes the state share of Medicaid expenditures as well as a wide range of local services .
According to the Kaiser.edu website, health expenditures in the United States neared $2.6 trillion in 2010, over ten times the $256 billion spent in 1980. The rate of growth in recent years has slowed relative to the late 1990s and early 2000s, but is still expected to grow faster than national income over the foreseeable future. Addressing this growing burden continues to be a major policy priority. Furthermore, the United States has been in a recession for much of the past decade, resulting in higher unemployment and lower incomes for many Americans. These conditions have put even more attention on health spending and affordability .
Expenditures and Macroenvironmental Influences
The NHS is free for residents of England and the UK from the point of service for all health care services except for some prescriptions, optical and dental services of which charges are paid by the patients. When the NHS was launched in 1948 it had a budget of £437 million (roughly £9 billion at today’s value). The total healthcare expenditures for the UK in 2010 according to the Office of National Statistics was 140.8m£ of which 117.3m£ was for the pubic sector and 23.47m£ was for the private sector. The total percentage of the GDP of healthcare expenditure was 9.6 percent (Office of National Statistics, 2012). For 2011/12 it is around £106 billion .
U.S. health care spending grew 3.9 percent in 2010 following record slow growth of 3.8 percent in 2009; the two slowest rates of growth in the fifty-one year history of the National Health Expenditure Accounts. When total health expenditures reached $2.6 trillion, that translates to $8,402 per person or 17.9 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) .
The Department of Health has opened two new competitions with up to £2 million of funding each to develop technological and innovative solutions to tackle two major health challenges. The challenge is to change people’s behavior in order to reduce the impact of obesity and alcohol related diseases and improve the number of patients taking their medication as prescribed.
Alcohol and obesity related diseases cost the NHS over £7 billion each year and between 6-10 % of all hospital admissions could be preventable if prescription medication was taken correctly .
The onrush of increasingly sophisticated technology does not seem to be matched by an equal degree of advancement in medical services delivery in the US. Concerns about access, costs, assessment and evaluation, quality, and planning are constantly on the US agenda. The continuing evolution of health care in the United States follows a long-standing pattern of technical progress and complex delivery issues, which ultimately never seems to be adequately addressed to meet economic, social, political, and equity needs. But the increasing ability to intervene in the progression of disease, or to avert the occurrence of disease, suggests that the payoff from a more efficient and effective delivery system will be more substantial than ever before in our nation’s history .
Summary Comments
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tracks and reports on more than 1,200 health system measures across 34 industrialized countries. In their most recent report, they surmise that health care spending in the U.S. towers over the other countries.
The U.S. has fewer hospital beds and physicians, and sees fewer hospital and physician visits, than in most other countries. Prescription drug utilization, prices, and spending all appear to be highest in the U.S., as does the supply, utilization, and price of diagnostic imaging. U.S. per formance on a limited set of quality measures is variable, ranking highly on five-year cancer survival, middling on in-hospital case-specific mortality, and poorly on hospital admissions for chronic conditions and amputations due to diabetes. Findings suggest that there are opportunities for cross-national learning to improve health system performance. (Common Wealth Fund, 2011)
The NHS, like other healthcare systems, has never consistently and systematically measured changes in its patients’ health. As a result, it is impossible to say exactly how much the nation 's health improves for each pound spent by the NHS.
In the UK life expectancy has been rising and infant mortality has been falling since the NHS was established. Both figures compare favorably with other nations. Surveys also show that patients are generally satisfied with the care they receive from the NHS. Importantly, people who have had recent direct experience of the NHS tend to report being more satisfied than people who have not .
The most significant difference between the two health care systems is the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau reported 49.9 million people who are uninsured. This number is decidedly increasing due to the impact of the economic downturn in the US over the last six years and the resulting high unemployment rate. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act or Health Care Reform is still a mystery to most US citizens. There is a fear of the unknown among citizens young and old, and among small and large business owners due to the complex nature of the new health care system and the many unanswered questions about how it will change health care, as they have known it for decades. Additionally and more importantly, what will it do to facilitate access to health care for those who need it the most – the uninsured?
Bibliography
American Health Association. (2010). The US Health Care System 2010. AHA Journals.
American Public Health Association. (2003). Universal Health Care: Lessons from the British Experience. American Journal of Public Health .
AVERT. (2012). Who Has to Pay for NHS Treatment in the UK? Retrieved August 2012, from avert.org: http://www.avert.org/freenhs.htm
Centers for Disease and Prevention Control. (2009). FASTSTATS - Deaths and Mortality. Retrieved August 2012, from CDC.gov: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm/
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (2010). NationalHealthExpendData. Retrieved August 2012, from cms.gov: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf
Department of Health. (2012). About us | Department of Health. Retrieved August 2012, 2012, from dh.gov.uk: http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/about-us/
Department of Health. (n.d.). Public health, adult social care, and the NHS. Retrieved August 2012, from healthandcare.dh.gov.uk: http://healthandcare.dh.gov.uk/public-health-system/
DOH. (2012, May 18). 4 million for technological solutions to tackle healthcare problems | Department of Health. Retrieved August 2012, from dh.gov: http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/2012/03/sbri/
Guardian News and Media Limited. (2011, September 28). UK has worst quality of life in Europe. The Guardian .
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2012, January). U.S. Health Care Costs: Issue Modules, Background Brief - KaiserEDU.org. Retrieved August 2012, from KaiserEDU.org: http://www.kaiseredu.org/Issue-Modules/US-Health-Care-Costs/Background-Brief.aspx
National Health Service. (2012). About the NHS. Retrieved August 8, 2012, from nhs.uk: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/overview.aspx
NHS. (2011, October 24). The NHS structure. Retrieved August 22, 2012, from nhs.uk: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/nhsstructure.aspx
Office for National Statistics. (2011, June). 2011 Census. Retrieved August 2012, from ons.gov: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2012). OECD. Retrieved August 2012, from OECD.org: http://www.oecd.org/about/
Prescher, D. (2011, January 3). U.S. claims top spot in IL 's quality of life index 2011. International Living .
The Health Care Manager. (2007). A Comparative Analysis of the United Kingdom and the United States Health Care Systems. The Health Care Manager , 26 (Number 3), 190-212.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
WhiteHouse.gov. (2012, August). The Affordable Care Act - Implementation Timeline. Retrieved August 23, 2012, from whitehouse.gov: http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/timeline
WHO. (2012, April 2). More countries move towards universal health coverage. Retrieved August 2012, from World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2012/universal_health_coverage_20120402/en/
Williams, S. J. (2005). Essentials of Health Services (3 ed.). Clifton Park, NY: Cengage Delmar Learning.