This book is for everyone who is concerned about the successful future of a very special institution the National Health Service (NHS). It provides the reader with an overview of the complexity of healthcare delivery, and the crucial influence that fairness should have on healthcare planning. The National Health Service Act was approved by Clement Attlees Labour Government on 5 July 1948. It was created in a great post-war spirit of community with the aim of providing free care at the point of need for everyone, rich or poor. However, right from the start the NHS has faced issues in tackling the challenges that arise in trying to be fair, and of how greater equity in healthcare can be achieved.
The focus is on issues of fairness and equity in healthcare in the NHS, what fairness and equity mean both generally and in the organisational context. It begins with chapters on the inequalities that exist in UK healthcare delivery today. Then a series of chapters focuses on different elements of fairness in healthcare: governance, policy, and leadership; finance and financing; healthcare delivery; the key behaviours required of those working in the NHS and importantly, the patient perspectives.
The conclusions and recommendations will be of great interest to health and social care practice staff, health and social care managers and leaders, politicians and policy makers, health and social care specialists, operational managers within the system, NHS boards and healthcare governors, integrated care providers, primary, continuity and specialist providers, and charities in the healthcare sector. It will also be of interest to academics and others involved in training, research and development, students studying health, social care, and management and to the wider public: to everyone who is concerned about the successful future of a very special institution the National Health Service.
This book is for everyone who is concerned about the successful future of a very special institution the National Health Service (NHS).
Preface. The History of the NHS: A Chronology of UK Health, Social Care
and Equity Policies, Statutory Legislation, and Regulatory Requirements
19402024, PART ONE: Health Care for All?
1. Our Unequal Health, What Now,
and Where Next?
2. Fairness in the NHS: Some Ethical Pointers, PART TWO:
Governance and Leadership,
3. Fairness in Boards and Governance,
4. Fairness
in Governance in the NHS,
5. Fairness and Finance in the NHS,
6. Fairness and
Organisational Leadership in the NHS, PART THREE: Policy and Skills,
7.
Questions of Fairness in Health and Social Care Policy Decisions A Socratic
Approach,
8. Faith, Spirituality, and the Concept of Fairness, PART FOUR:
Access, Equity and Fairness of Delivery,
9. Contemporary Specialist
Provision: Access, Equity, and Fairness of Delivery in the NHS,
10. Fairness
in the NHS: Patient and Employee Perspectives: April 2023, PART FIVE:
Conclusion,
11. Fairness in the NHS, Appendix A: Fairness in Health and
Social Care Policy Decisions: Socratic Questions Designed by Tony Culyer
Mike Thomas is Chair of University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, Chair of the Lancashire and South Cumbria Provider Collaborative Board, and Chair of the mental health and learning disability charity, Making Space.
Gay Haskins is former Dean of Executive Education of London Business School and Saļd Business School, University of Oxford, and co-author, with Mike Thomas and Lalit Johri of Kindness in Leadership, Routledge, 2018.
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