Community Care

Hospital building under the Private Finance Initiative

Tertiary care

Some hospitals provide specialist services such as heart and liver transplants, treatments for rare cancers and craniofacial services. These specialist services cover patients over more than one district or region.

There are also specialist hospitals of international renown such as the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street, Moorfields Eye Hospital and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. As well as offering highly specialised treatments, these hospitals are also centres for teaching and international research.

The Government wants to promote a partnership between the public and private sectors in many areas of industry and services. The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was launched in 1992 for this purpose: in the health service it means encouraging private companies to help finance the design, construction and running of NHS buildings and support services.

In May 1997, in order to boots the PFI, the new Government passed legislation which made the powers of NHS Trust clearer when signing PFI agreements. Further schemes costing ₤2,500 million have since been announced, amounting to the biggest hospital building programme in the history of the NHS.

Social services have the lead responsibility for community care services to meet the needs of older people, people with disabilities, mentally ill people or other vulnerable members of society. The NHS, however, has an important role in providing some services and in collaborating closely with social services to plan and deliver community care.

Here the role of the NHS includes helping to assess people's needs for community care, liaising with social services over hospital discharges to make sure people get the continuing care they need, as well as delivering some services. The NHS makes an important contribution to community care services, for example, district nurses provide nearly 2.5 million episodes of care annually.

Дата добавления: 2013-12-13