Now that we’ve taken a look at the US and Germany, it’s time to move on. The next country we will be looking at where is going to the land of fish and chips, the Queen, and Big Ben. Yes, that’s right, England. English healthcare system is much like the German healthcare system in regards to having a tight network that binds stakeholders to the healthcare system. However, there are slightly different outcomes that come out of the English healthcare system, and it’s set up in a slightly different way.

To start off, let’s take a look at how the system is governed. The English healthcare system is not like the polycentric unbounded healthcare system of the United States but is a self-governing bounded system. In England, the health service is called the National Health Service, and it also works with clinical commissioning groups. Clinical commissioning groups are used to identify the needs of the population, so they’re working with all the people that come in to identify what each community needs. Once these needs are identified, they enter a contract with providers, and providers are the insurers in the English healthcare system. In addition to the clinical commissioning groups and the insurance providers, the next group is the regulatory commission. Regulatory commissions include the Care Quality Commission and the NHS Improvement Commission. Lastly, there are a few other groups that are part of the English healthcare system, including the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence group. Both of these groups are there to provide guidance and evidence-based suggestions to all the aforementioned stakeholders. Thus, what we can see is the English healthcare system is based on a collaborative system of government.

Moving on, let’s take a look at the financial aspects of the English healthcare system. An interesting thing to note is that the English healthcare system consumes fewer resources than a lot of the other countries we will be talking about. The English healthcare system spends 9.8% of its GDP on healthcare end citizens in England spend about $630 per capita for out-of-pocket spending. The governmental system that takes care of this is similar to the United States legislative branch. The English Parliament is appropriating funds for the entire healthcare system. Now the services that will be offered are determined by these clinical commissioning groups that were mentioned earlier. This is mainly because clinical commissioning groups know the needs that their population is looking to have met. This works a lot like the local government that we have in the United States. The local governments are there to take care of the specific needs of their population and identify what those needs are, and then get the appropriate resources for state and federal governments. However, what we see in the United States is that there’s a lack of local public health organizations that are able to take care of the population. Now, another similarity between the United States and England is that they both use means-tested welfare programs. However, there are significant co-payments needed for long-term care because the English don’t put that much money from their health care spending budget into long-term care, which is mainly for the age population.

A difference with the English healthcare system is that there’s a lot more pressure on it. When we looked at the German healthcare system, there are about 150,000 medical professionals in the population. However, when you look at the English healthcare system, it has 34,952 general practitioners with about 1530 patients each. And this workforce shortage increases the pressure on the system and pushes it toward its breaking point.

Last, when taking a look at some of the service delivery numbers, they have a low number of beds for 1,000 people, and they’re about five doctor consultations per capita which are also pretty low. However, their immunization rate is about 71% for the flu, and they do spend quite a low amount on pharmaceuticals which are about 11.4%.

English healthcare system is an inefficient one at that with a lot of moving parts in a lot of collaboration. But, the problem with the system is there is too small of a workforce to maintain the demand brought to the healthcare system. With the addition of future physicians and medical professionals who can save the English healthcare system, it will probably be running a bit more smoothly and allow for greater utilization of the resources provided by the National Health Service and the groups that work with it.

Sources

Corbett, A. (n.d.). Comparative Health Systems. https://www.coursera.org/learn/comparative-health-systems.