Healthcare Industry

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© Matt Wuerker

Health care in the UK is a devolved matter, with England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each having their own systems of publicly funded healthcare, funded by and accountable to separate govts and parliaments, together with smaller private sector and voluntary provision.

Healthcare Lobby

Regulators

The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care oversees the 9 statutory bodies that regulate health professionals in the UK and Social Care in England. website, info on the 9 regulators

  1. General Medical Council: runs the Medical Register.
  2. Health and Care Professions Council: regulates other health professions in the UK
  3. Nursing and Midwifery Council: regulates nurses and midwives
  4. General Optical Council
  5. General Dental Council
  6. General Chiropractic Council
  7. General Osteopathic Council
  8. General Pharmaceutical Council
  9. Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland

Private Healthcare

Companies

Sunrise Senior Living

Sunrise Senior Living is an American operator of assisted living and other houses for senior citizens. Sunrise offers senior living services including independent living, assisted living, care for individuals with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of memory loss, as well as nursing and rehabilitative services.ref
Website.usa, Website.uk, Sunrise Senior LivingWikipedia-W.svg, Arcapita page, DDG "UK Senior Living Yielding"

Premiums

  • Apr.15.2018: Healthcare costs are a medical anomaly. It’s time to operate. It is unsurprising some people are tempted to take out private healthcare. How much does it actually cost? The answer depends on where you live: Londoners, on average, have to fork out nearly double the price paid by people in Newcastle upon Tyne, Glasgow or Edinburgh, with the home counties also paying over the odds. Geography is not the only factor, though. Research conducted for Money by Regency Health, an insurance broker, shows one company may charge as much as 60% more than another for cover for the same person. It is difficult to avoid the impression, however, that the insurance companies are taking advantage of the opacity. Money has tried to shine some light on this. Let’s hope others will follow. Peter Conradi, The Times.
  • Apr.15.2018: Private health insurance costs double in London. Many private policies, however, refuse to pay out for degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, even if customers develop the condition after decades of paying — but rarely claiming — on their policy. Many companies are also criticised for not covering mental health issues. Comment: ...the pay out ratio, the amount of the aggregate premium which actually gets used to pay for treatment is very low for UK private medical insurers. Last time I looked the Laingbuisson figure had it at 71% in 2015 for Bupa, with Axa down from 75.6% to 72.5%. In the Netherlands or Germany statutory health insurers pay out 95% and in the USA Obamacare stipulated a 90% plus pay out. Most large hospital operators will tell you that UK private medical insurance is not worth having. It is better to pay cash, but to shop around. The trouble is most consumers/patients are not willing to do this. In any case, if anything goes seriously wrong you are probably better in an NHS hospital. Ruth Emery, The Times.

Nursing Home Care

See main article: Nursing Home Care

In 2002, nursing homes in the UK became known as "Care Homes with Nursing", and residential homes became known as "Care Homes". Both are regulated by separate organisations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. (more...), Nursing home care in the United KingdomWikipedia-W.svg

Home Care

See main article: Home Care

Home care, (also referred to as domiciliary care, social care, live-in care or in-home care), is supportive care provided in the home. Care may be provided by licensed healthcare professionals who provide medical care needs or by professional caregivers who provide daily care to help to ensure the activities of daily living (ADL's) are met. In-home medical care is often and more accurately referred to as "home health care" or "formal care" Often, the term "home health care" is used to distinguish it from "non-medical care", "custodial care", or "private-duty care" which is care that is provided by persons who are not nurses, doctors, or other licensed medical personnel.

England

  • Healthcare in EnglandWikipedia-W.svg
  • Elderly care, Elderly care § EnglandWikipedia-W.svg Care for the elderly in England is increasingly rationed according to a joint report by the King's Fund and Nuffield Trust. People are left to struggle without support on their own. Larger numbers of old people need help due to an aging population but less is being paid out to help them. A million people who need care get neither formal nor informal help.

Wales

Scotland

Northern Ireland


Articles

  • Aug.20.2018: The only way is ethics: a new approach to outsourcing social care. Private companies provide the bulk of social care – but commissioners must be sure they have a clear ethical strategy. Outsourcing public services, especially to the private sector, has been the model of choice in the UK for around 30 years. Nowhere has this been more the case than in adult social care. There is scant evidence from any sector that the outsourcing model works, and social care is no exception. Much less attention, however, has been given to the ethics of decision-making among public services commissioners – and the need for an ethical commissioning strategy. This could cover a range of requirements. Ethical employment, Tax compliance, Transparency, Localism, Ethical vision. Introducing effective ethical commissioning means the skills, attitudes and behaviour of public services commissioners must change. The Cabinet Office and its partners have developed the Commissioning Academy for senior leaders from all parts of the public sector, and "Skills for Care" offers a certificate in principles of commissioning for wellbeing, but these barely scratch the surface. More broadly, the cultivation of ethical commissioning should be part of a wider strategy for developing ethical standards across every aspect of public life. Bob Hudson, Professor, Centre for Health Services Studies, Kent University, The Guardian.
  • Jun.18.2018: How IVF became a licence to print money. Private fertility clinics routinely try to sell desperate patients add-ons that almost certainly don’t help – why isn’t more done to monitor the industry? ...my experience in the private sector has left me feeling discombobulated and angry. ...the UK fertility market was worth £320m in 2016, with private investors increasingly interested in the sector. IVF is expensive. And what makes it worse, says Hugh Risebrow, the report’s author, is the lack of pricing transparency. “The headline prices quoted may be, say, £3,500, but you end up with a bill of £7,000,” he says. “This is because there are things not included that you need – and then things that are offered, but are not evidence-based.” ... In these deep and muddy waters, it is the HFEA, the independent regulatory body for overseeing fertility treatment and research, that is best placed to bring clarity. But its remit does not extend to controlling or licensing much of what add-ons constitute. It has no control over drugs, for example, or reproductive immunology. However, its chief executive, Peter Thompson, is upbeat about changing the status quo. In the autumn, the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA) will require clinics to prove they are providing evidence-based information about add-ons to all patients. This will be enforced by HFEA inspectors, who inspect licensed clinics every two years. Fay Schopen, The Guardian.
  • Feb.20.2018: Alexa, could health care be fixed? No, not even Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase can cure employer-based insurance system: Our view. Not even a company as crafty as Amazon, or a bot as all-knowing as Alexa, can fix our nonsensical health care system. The health care system has neither market economics nor budgets to contain costs, so prices go up willy-nilly. At the heart of America’s system is the central feature of patient and provider conspiring to spend what is mostly other people’s money. Though that is not unique to America, what is unique is that those other people have virtually no power to set limits. While providers, such as hospitals and drug companies, often have monopoly or near-monopoly powers, the people who foot the bill are fragmented into thousands of insurance pools run by dozens of insurance companies, all but one of which — UnitedHealth Group — has a national market share in the single digits. That’s why prices keep going up at rates well above inflation. It’s not a fair fight. In health care, Amazon and friends aren’t up against an old-school industry fallen behind the times; they're facing powerful monopolies or near-monopolies brimming with technology of their own. Costs won’t be brought down until we move away from our employer-sponsored system and toward one where the Americans who pay for costly coverage are consolidated into larger, more powerful pools that can say no to price increases. That won’t come from three companies tinkering at the edges. USA Today.