HEALTHCARE IN UNITED KINGDOM

Healthcare in United Kingdom

Healthcare in United Kingdom

Primary health and social care services in the UK: progress towards partnership

Analysis of the Article

The role of partnership working between organisations and the governance of welfare has received critical attention within the social policy field recently. Reforming healthcare is a key challenge for almost every country worldwide because there are aspects of each nation's healthcare delivery system that can be improved upon. The fundamental goal of healthcare reform is to promote the equity of health systems; equity includes the following five aspects: (1) broad access to care, (2) expansive coverage, (3) affordable costs for consumers and providers, (4) positive health outcomes, and (5) few disparities. Although it is impossible to eliminate all disparities in healthcare, existing gaps can be narrowed through reform efforts. Healthcare reform priorities are generally very different from country to country. For example, the primary reform goals for developed nations most likely focus on seeking equitable access to care, a high level of public satisfaction, and high quality of care while controlling costs. Meanwhile, countries with emerging economies may focus on delivering high-quality care at costs that are affordable for growing middle class populations. The health system of United Kingdom is predominantly government run-health institutions that are mainly held and operated by the government (Newman 2001, 34).

Given the mounting evidence that primary care is strongly associated with health outcomes, efforts to assess and assure the quality of primary care service delivery are important. The Johns Hopkins Primary Care Assessment Tools (PCAT), developed by the Johns Hopkins Primary Care Centre, consist of a series of scales to evaluate primary care, and include consumer client surveys, facility surveys, provider surveys, and health system survey. The surveys were designed with questions that could be objectively measured such as the following question that can be answered dichotomously (with a yes or no response): “can you be seen by a practitioner from your usual source of care during the weekend?” Adult consumer surveys are used to evaluate accessibility of primary care, and commonly include questions on satisfaction with care. The related surveys in PCAT do not include such questions, because they are often influenced by consumer expectations of healthcare that can widely vary and are difficult to objectively assess.

The UK-based studies

In order to study the relationship between primary care and social care, researchers in this paper conducted a study using data from the U.K. The U.K. degree of concern on primary care was measured using data on the number of primary care physicians/10,000 population, while data on life expectancy were used as a measure of health outcomes. Results showed that the number of primary care physicians/10,000 population was positively associated with life expectancy, which suggests that advancing primary care could be helpful in improving health outcomes. We also conducted analyses to control for potential confounding effects and to further examine the effects of primary care on social health outcomes. Multiple regression coefficients of primary care physician-population ratios, income inequalities, and ...