Department of Health & Social Care

From WikiCorporates
(Redirected from NHS Digital)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

HM-Government-Arms.svg Governme Flag-UK.svg

Dept-of-Health-and-Social-Care-horiz.svg

Ministerial Department

The Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) is responsible for govt policy on health and social care in England. It is supported by 28 agencies and public bodies.
Contact
Website:Gov.uk Website
Facebook:@DHSCgovuk
Twitter:@DHSCgovuk
LinkedIn:Dept of Health & Social Care
YouTube:Dept of Health & Social Care

Contents

ToDo: a short Timeline. See WPWikipedia-W.svg

Info on all groups here

Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme

Time was, the Prescriptions, Pricing and Supply team within the Medicines, Pharmacy and Industry Group of the DoH administered the scheme ref, Apr.2014, ref, DDG search. However, this Group has disappeared; and none of the Dept's bodies mention the PPRS. The nearest I've got is this paper, which says the author is "Community Care/ Medicines and Pharmacy/Medicines Pricing and Supply / Cost Centre No. 17080", ref, Feb.2018.

High Profile Groups

Healthcare UK

Healthcare UK is a joint initiative between the Department of Health & Social Care, Department for International Trade and NHS England. It was set up to sell NHS expertise abroad but, far from benefitting the NHS, 80% of all contracts gained through Healthcare UK have ended up in private hands. Enough evidence has emerged to show how Healthcare UK acts as a conduit for commercial companies in a bid to expand the ‘domestic market’ here in the UK as well as increasing the market abroad. This is Healthcare UK, unlocking deals for UK companies, some of who are based in tax havens and whose investors have donated to the Conservative party. All in the name of the NHS. ref

  • Jul.31.2014: Healthcare UK: A conduit for Market expansion? (Part 2) Since the Health and Social Care Act officially began in Apr.2012, research carried out by the NHS Support Federation revealed 70% of NHS contracts have ended up with private firms amounting to £billions worth of income. What this amounts to is an aggressive expansion of the UK healthcare market, which although not mentioned in govt propaganda, is their intent. Healthcare UK was meant to benefit the NHS, but contained in the memorandum signed between Healthcare UK and the Chinese Ministry of Health, it is clear that the main areas of cooperation are designed towards channeling contract opportunities towards private companies - see Appendix 1. A further MOU held between Healthcare UK and CITIC Trust, a Chinese investment arm of the CITIC Group, reveals the extent of cooperation required for their partnership to work. A further MOU made between Healthcare UK and the health Bureau of the Eastern coastal province of Zhejiang contains a much wider level of agreement: PFIs. Companies like construction firm Interserve, who have Conservative Peer Lord Blackwell as a director, have raked in £millions through selling some of their PFI interests. Serco and Carillion, who both have representatives on the board of Healthcare UK, have also gained major revenue through PFI schemes, and this particular avenue in China, will do nothing for the NHS. Social Investigations.
  • Jul.31.2014: Healthcare UK: A Conduit for Market expansion? (Part 1) Healthcare UK was set up in order to sell NHS expertise abroad, but far from benefitting the NHS, 80% of all contracts gained through Healthcare UK have ended up in private hands. Memoranda of Understandings made between China and the UK show that in exchange for financial support for UK companies from Chinese investment, the govt has promised to provide information on UK health 'policy' and offer China’s main financial investment arm access to 'confidential' information. (...) Records of individual contracts won through Healthcare UK, that resulted in an export or non-export deal, are termed "business wins". Information provided to Healthcare UK on these "business wins" is considered by UK Trade and Investment - of which Healthcare UK is a part - to be 'commercially confidential' and therefore hidden from pubic view. Concern over what contracts are being gained and what commercial companies are benefitting is heightened by the fact that Serco, who are under investigation by the Serious Fraud Squad, sit on the Healthcare UK board. (more...) History of Healthcare UK's inception and status. Linkback: Earl Howe, KPMG, Circle Partnership, Odey Asset Management. Circle's former employees Nick Seddon and Christina Robinson work in the No.10 Health policy unit and as a special adviser to Jeremy Hunt respectively. Further parliamentary connections to Circle include Conservative peer Baron Higgins of Worthing, who holds in excess of £50,000 worth of shares in Lansdowne UK Equity Fund, another investor in Circle. Circle Holdings, the controlling body of Circle Health Ltd, is based in the low tax jurisdiction of Jersey. Conservative MP Ken Clarke, who recently resigned from his post as the Minister without portfolio, met with Paolo Pieri, CFO and Tom Muir, the Director of Communications of Circle Partnership in Jun.2013. If so many contracts are landing in the hands of private companies, how can Healthcare UK claim to be for the benefit of the NHS? Social Investigations.

Executive Agencies

Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency

SecurMed UK is the UK Medicines Verification Organisation, a non-profit organisation set up to establish the UK Medicines Verification System for the UK. SecurMed UK are working with stakeholders across the medicines supply chain to enable the 'EU Falsified Medicines Directive to be implemented by the go-live date of Feb.09.2019. link

Public Health England

Dept-of-Health-and-Social-Care-PHE.svg

See also Alison TedstoneWikipedia-W.svg

  • Aug.17.2020: Coronavirus: Public Health England 'to be replaced'. Public Health England is to be replaced by a new agency that will specifically deal with protecting the country from pandemics, according to a Sunday Telegraph report. Ministers have reportedly been unhappy with the way PHE has responded to the coronavirus crisis. The new body may be called the" National Institute for Health Protection" and would become "effective" in Sept.2020, but the change would not be fully completed until Spring 2021. BBC News.
  • Mar.12.2018: Public Health England doesn’t deserve to keep its billions of taxpayer funding. Public Health England, a £4bn taxpayer-funded quango, seems to respect no limits on the use of govt-imposed rules in directing, steering or banning individuals’ lifestyle decisions. The concept of "public health" has been stretched to breaking point; it now simply means the aggregation of private health outcomes. For example, obesity is not a contagious disease, but thwarting it is now a central mission for the bureaucrats. Last week, its interventionist efforts hit overdrive. It is now demanding an overall cut in the British food supply by 20%. The apparent plan is that industry will offer to make these changes voluntarily, but advertising bans and taxes are threatened if producers fail to reduce the calories in their food by 20% by the mid-2020s. The likely outcome is smaller sizes for the same price. Given that we have the NHS, my reckless approach to personal health issues potentially becomes your higher tax bill. Heavy-handed intervention in one individual’s lifestyle choices is therefore justified on the grounds that the rest of us are obliged to pick up the bill. The fact that tobacco and alcohol taxes yield far more ££s than the costs of treating illnesses associated with these products does not appear to have led to health campaigners concluding that a freeze or reduction in these levies would be reasonable. Mark Littlewood (IEA), The Times.
DoHSC-NHS-Test-Trace.svg
  • Jul.13.2017: Health Profile for England: Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. Provisional data for 2016 indicate that life expectancy at birth has now reached 79.5 years for males and 83.1 years for females. The latest data on healthy life expectancy (the number of years lived in self-assessed good health) (2013 to 2015) show that it is now 63.4 for males and 64.1 for females. Research and Analysis, Public Health England.

Executive Non-Departmental Public Bodies

Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulates all health and social care services in England. The commission ensures the quality and safety of care in hospitals, dentists, ambulances, Care homes, and the care given in people's own homes, in-home care.

  • Jun.09.2018: Watchdog let fraudster Denise Baran run care homes. A fraudster jailed for stealing £9,000 from a woman of 82 was allowed to manage a care home after the CQC failed to block her appointment. The CQC, which regulates care homes, knew of Denise Baran’s criminal conviction when it approved her registration in 2010 as manager of a home for 25 elderly residents. Relatives & Residents Association, a charity representing care home residents and relatives, said that Baran’s crime should have automatically barred her and condemned the CQC’s decision as “staggering”.The Times revealed last year that the CQC covered up the suspected rape of an autistic man by a high-risk sex offender at a north London care home. It also failed to prosecute the company that ran the home for criminal offences. The CQC’s chief executive responded to the article by ordering an independent inquiry into its handling of the case, whose findings would be made public. The inquiry has yet to conclude. Andrew Norfolk, The Times. See also Financial crimes do not lead to automatic ban on running care homes
  • Mar.08.2018: Young told to 'fake mental health crisis' to get help. GPs are telling young people with mental health problems to pretend things are worse than they are to get help, the care watchdog has said. Claire Murdoch, national mental health director for NHS England, said services for young people were improving "but from a starting point of historic underfunding and legacy understaffing, relative to rapidly growing need". Kat Lay, The Times.

Health Education England

HEE's function is to provide national leadership and coordination for the education and training within the health and public health workforce within England.

Health Research Authority

Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority

HFEA is the independent regulator of fertility treatment in the UK. Part of their role is to collect data from every licensed fertility clinic about the tens of thousands of treatment cycles they perform each year. The information is held in their database called "the Register". Fertility treatment 2014–2016 Trends and Figures HFEA, 2014/16.

Human Tissue Authority

  • Mar.08.2018: Surge in people donating bodies to medical schools. Record numbers of people are leaving their bodies to medical schools when they die amid rising demand for cadavers from trainee surgeons. The 28 schools licensed to accept whole bodies by the Human Tissue Authority (HTA), which regulates donations to ensure the wishes of donors and families are respected, said that they had accepted a total of 1,344 in 2017, up almost 40% from 969 in 2008. The number of bodies accepted was less than half of those who registered to donate, due to condition. Kaya Burgess, The Times.

NHS Blood and Transplant

NHS Blood and Transplant improves the supply of donated blood, organs and tissues, and raises the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of blood and transplant services.

NHS Business Services Authority

The NHSBSA provides central services to NHS bodies, patients and the public, such as managing the NHS pension scheme, issuing European Health Insurance Cards (EHIC), and administering payments to pharmacists and dentists.
The NHSBSA was created in 2006 by bringing together a number of previously separate NHS organisations. ref, p.7

NHS Prescription Services

NHS Prescription Services is the largest organisational component of the NHS Business Services Authority. Its primary function is to determine the reimbursement and remuneration due when prescriptions are dispensed outside hospitals anywhere in England. Detailed information, collected when prescriptions are processed for payment, is then made available to organisations within the NHS, to support management, planning and governance activities. (WP)

  • Supply Chain Co-ordination Limited (SCCL) has been created by the DHSC to operate the national supply chain for the NHS from 1 April 2018. During 2018-19, we will work with this new company to finalise the full transition to new arrangements. This transition will be complete by 31 March 2019. ref, p.12

Support Services

Healthy Food Schemes
Essential Medicines
  • Essential Medicines Buffer Stock
  • Childhood Vaccines

NHS Digital

The Health & Social Care Information Centre, t/a NHS Digital, is the national provider of information, data and IT systems for commissioners, analysts and clinicians in health and social care in England, particularly those involved with the National Health Service (England).
NHS Digital is the national collator of information about health and social care, and publishes 260+ statistical publications each year, including Official Statistics and National Statistics. It also runs the national website for the NHS in England, #NHS Choices.
Running costs: £10.5m pa; see FoI on this page.

NHS Digital was born out of the Health and Social Care Information Centre, which in turn came out of the troubled National Programme for IT. Its job is to "deliver systems and services to the NHS and the wider health and social care sector" in England.[1] iView, "for professionals working with health and social care data"

  • Jul.02.2018: The NHS accidentally disclosed 150,000 patients' personal data. The NHS accidentally disclosed data on patients who had objected to the sharing of their information. The Information Commissioner's Office said: “We are aware of an incident involving NHS Digital and are making enquiries.” Earlier, in a written statement to Parliament, Health minister Jackie Doyle-Price said NHS Digital had recently identified a "supplier defect" in the processing of historical patient objections to the sharing of their confidential health data, recorded between Mar.2015–Jun.2018 using a system by IT company TPP. Andrew Gregory, The Mirror.
  • May.09.2018: UK Home Office tiptoes back from slurping immigrants' NHS files. Govt says non-clinical info will only be extracted in, er, loosely defined circumstances. The govt has partially backed down from ordering the NHS to hand over patients' personal details to the Home Office so it can track down illegal immigrants. The govt argued that non-clinical info – such as last known address or date of birth – was at the "lower end of the privacy spectrum," and flatly rejected calls from Sarah Wollaston, chairwoman of the health select committee, to scrap the arrangement. However, the Windrush scandal has since shone a brighter light on the British government's policy of fostering a rather "hostile environment" for illegal immigrants. Today, digital minister Margot James indicated that the handover agreement was going to be rejigged. The Home Office said that, with immediate effect, immigration officials can only request personal information on patients it specifically intends to deport because they have been sent down for a year or more for committing other crimes. Also, if someone unlawfully in the UK is deemed a public danger, or has committed a "serious crime," then they too could have their non-clinical records extracted from the NHS by immigration officials. This means, we note, that even if a person has yet to be convicted of a crime, if their presence is considered to be a risk to security, the Home Office could still pull up their contact details and other info from NHS databases. However, Rita Chadha, of the Migrants Rights Network, which has launched a legal challenge against the data handover, was more cautious... Rebecca Hill, The Register.
  • Mar.15.2018: NHS Digital heads accused of being 'suppliers', not 'custodians' of UK patient data. The heads of the Digital arm of the UK's National Health Service have been accused of acting as suppliers, rather than guardians, of the data belonging to patients under their care by handing address information to the Home Office for immigration enforcement. Chief exec of NHS Digital Sarah Wilkinson, and the organisation’s chair Noel Gordon, were grilled about the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on data-sharing between with the Home Office on January 2017, in a Health and Social Care Committee today. Committee chair Sarah Wollaston wrote to NHS Digital in January to ask it to put an immediate stop to the agreement, citing concerns that there had been "inadequate consultation“. However, the NHS has said it would continue sharing data with the Home Office for immigration enforcement. Kat Hall, The Register.
  • Mar.09.2018: NHS Digital to probe live-stream spillage of confidential patient info. NHS Digital has opened an inquiry after patients' personal information was revealed during a live-streamed research session for a new app. Yesterday, the UK's National Health Service showed off the software application to members of the public. However, those folks were potentially unaware that the demo session was being video streamed to a public YouTube channel, and were entering their medical or personal data in view of the internet. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt last year said everyone should be able to use an app to access their medical records and book a GP appointment by the end of 2018. The NHS Apps Library was relaunched last year and is in public beta. It is intended to be the the one-stop shop for "safe and effective digital tools". It was shelved in 2015 after Imperial College London revealed serious problems with a number of the 79 apps sitting on the NHS-branded store. Kat Hall, The Register.
  • Jan.31.2018: Govt 'comprehensively ignored' advice over NHS data-sharing deal. NHS Digital must put an immediate stop to patient data-sharing deal with the Home Office for immigration enforcement, MPs have said. The deal allows the Home Office to ask the National Health Service for non-clinical information – such as date of birth or last known address – for suspected immigration offences. During a heated evidence session earlier this month, doctors and patient groups told the Commons Health Committee that NHS Digital was operating to a "lower standard of confidentiality" than rest of the NHS, and risked damaging public trust and deterring migrants from seeking healthcare. Sarah Wollaston added that the govt had “comprehensively ignored” the advice of Public Health England – the only health organisation she said that had been appropriately consulted. Linkback: Sarah Wilkinson, General Medical Council, National Data Guardian. Rebecca Hill, The Register.
  • Nov.27.2017: Looking for scrubs? Nah, NHS wants white hats – the infosec techie kind. NHS Digital is looking to make a deal with consultants to create a security operations centre, which it says will ensure the safety of staff and patient data nationwide. The new unit will be initially tasked with protecting the systems proactively, by hunting down vulnerabilities in NHS Digital's network, then searching for weaknesses in individual hospitals' cyber defences if necessary. This comes against the backdrop of the Wannacry ransomware attack in May this year, which demonstrated the NHS' lack of preparedness for dealing with a large attack across several locations at once. Richard Priday, The Register.
  • Jul.20.2017: NHS trusts splashed £260m on PCs in last four years. In the last four years, NHS Trusts have spent £260m on 401,084 new PCs, at an average cost of £650.54 a box, according to FoI responses. However, thousands of PCs were hit by the Wannacry/Wannacrypt ransomware at the end of May. The usage of Windows XP in the NHS has reduced from 15-18% at Dec.2015, to 4.7% of systems. But security experts have said it is likely XP was not the main infection vector. Kat Hall, The Register.

NHS Choices

NHS Choices is the primary public-facing website of the NHS. Its pages include directories of local health services (a Directory of Services), information on a wide range of conditions and treatments and accessible public health information. The site also provides comparative data about healthcare providers, to help people make informed choices about their healthcare and allows patients to provide online feedback on services.

Pharmacy contractors can register to take ownership of their pharmacy profiles and edit information such as opening hours, services offered and car parking arrangements. It is also possible to register to receive alerts and respond to any patient feedback left on the site. ref

NHS England

NHS England authorises the new clinical commissioning groups, which are the drivers of the new, clinically-led commissioning system introduced by the Health and Social Care Act.

NHS England's official name is the NHS Commissioning Board. It oversees the budget, planning, delivery and day-to-day operation of the commissioning side of the NHS in England. It holds the contracts for GPs and NHS dentists. Every year, the Secretary of State publishes the NHS Mandate, which sets out the objectives for the coming year. Regulations are also published each year to give legal force to the mandate.

  • Working together. From 1 April, NHS England and NHS Improvement come together to act as a single organisation. It will mean we have one website but not quite yet. NHS England. Accessed Mar.28.2019.
  • Aug.30.2018: NHS bosses urge hospitals to send patients to private firms. NHS bosses have urged hospitals to send patients to be treated by private healthcare firms in a bid to reduce the increasing number of patients waiting for planned operations. The move has sparked claims that it will waste scarce NHS funding and that profit-driven operators will use the service’s desperation to cut waiting lists to charge higher prices. NHS England and NHS Improvement have written to hospitals and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) telling them to produce plans urgently to tackle the growing backlog. The letters suggest that that may involve private firms being paid to operate on patients whom NHS hospitals are too busy to treat. In his letter Matthew Swindells, NHS England’s national director, told the 195 CCGs, the local NHS bodies that pay for care, that waiting lists are now so huge that patients are having to wait for “inexcusable” lengths of time to receive the care they need. The edicts are likely to lead to an increase in the number of NHS patients having surgery provided by firms such as Care UK, Spire Healthcare and Virgin Care, but paid for by the NHS. NHS Providers, which represents trusts, voiced unease about the plan, which it warned could undermine hospitals’ already fragile finances. Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow health secretary, criticised what he said would be a “bonanza for the private sector”. Denis Campbell, The Guardian.
  • Oct.2014: The Five Year Forward View was produced, which envisaged development of new models to suit local needs.
  • Jun.2015: Established a so-called "success regine"" in South and Mid Essex, North Cumbria, Northeast and West Devon. The regime is intended to tackle "deep rooted and systemic issues that previous interventions have not tackled across the whole health and care economy".
  • Apr.2016: England was re-organised into 44 "Sustainability and Transformation Plan" (STP) areas, with populations between 300,000 – 3 million. Each area has a "leader", who is responsible for the implementation of the STP.
  • Apr.2017: a "Capped Expenditure Process" was introduced, which applied to NHS commissioners and Providers in the 13 areas with the largest budget deficits, in order to reduce their spending by around £500 million.
  • Oct.2016: a new system for the management of operational difficulties in hospitals was introduced, replacing the rather poorly-defined local system of red and black alerts. There are 4 OPEL levels: Level 1 is a state of normality, and Level 4 is a major crisis requiring external intervention either regionally or nationally. This is intended, among other things, to enable comparisons of trends over time and between different areas.

NHS Shared Business Services

A joint venture company between the DHSC and French IT services company Sopra Steria. NHS SBS provides back office services to NHS Trusts such as payroll, pensions, human resources, recruitment and registration authority services.

See main article: NHS Shared Business Services

Healthcare UK

Healthcare UK is a joint initiative between the Department of Health and Social Care, Department for International Trade and NHS England. It was set up to sell NHS expertise abroad but, far from benefitting the NHS, 80% of all contracts gained through Healthcare UK have ended up in private hands. Enough evidence has emerged to show how Healthcare UK acts as a conduit for commercial companies in a bid to expand the ‘domestic market’ here in the UK as well as increasing the market abroad. This is Healthcare UK, unlocking deals for UK companies, some of who are based in tax havens and whose investors have donated to the Conservative party. All in the name of the NHS. ref

Cancer Drugs Fund

  • Sept.17.2015: The death of the cancer drugs fund? The Cancer Drugs Fund has been a major point of controversy over the past five years as health economists and politicians question why such a Fund should exist. The Fund [pronounced 'unsustainable' today by the National Audit Office] was meant to just be an interim budget to help bridge the gap in access to these treatments before the creation of a new drug pricing system more PMLiVE.

NHS Litigation Authority

NHS Resolution, the operating name of NHS Litigation Authority, is an arm's length body of the Department of Health. It changed its name in Apr.2017.

National Institute for Health & Care Excellence

NICE's role is to improve outcomes for people using the NHS and other public health and social care services.

See main article: National Institute for Health & Care Excellence

Advisory Non-Departmental Public Bodies

Administration of Radioactive Substances Advisory Committee

  • x

Commission on Human Medicines

NHS Pay Review Body

  • x

Advisory Committee on Clinical Excellence Awards

  • x

Committee on Mutagenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products & the Environment

  • x

Review Body on Doctors’ & Dentists Remuneration

  • x

British Pharmacopoeia Commission

Independent Reconfiguration Panel

A group of experts that advises Matt Hancock, Health and Social Care secretary, on which hospital units should close as a result of NHS plans to "improve" care.

Other Bodies

Accelerated Access Review

Morecambe Bay Investigation

NHS Counter Fraud Authority

NHS Improvement

Monitor became part of NHS Improvement on Apr.01.2016, ref [DDG search]

  • Aug.30.2018: NHS bosses urge hospitals to send patients to private firms. NHS bosses have urged hospitals to send patients to be treated by private healthcare firms in a bid to reduce the increasing number of patients waiting for planned operations. The move has sparked claims that it will waste scarce NHS funding and that profit-driven operators will use the service’s desperation to cut waiting lists to charge higher prices. NHS England and NHS Improvement have written to hospitals and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) telling them to produce plans urgently to tackle the growing backlog. The letters suggest that that may involve private firms being paid to operate on patients whom NHS hospitals are too busy to treat. In his letter Matthew Swindells, NHS England’s national director, told the 195 CCGs, the local NHS bodies that pay for care, that waiting lists are now so huge that patients are having to wait for “inexcusable” lengths of time to receive the care they need. The edicts are likely to lead to an increase in the number of NHS patients having surgery provided by firms such as Care UK, Spire Healthcare and Virgin Care, but paid for by the NHS. NHS Providers, which represents trusts, voiced unease about the plan, which it warned could undermine hospitals’ already fragile finances. Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow health secretary, criticised what he said would be a “bonanza for the private sector”. Denis Campbell, The Guardian.
  • Oct.17.2018: While all eyes look to Brexit, our NHS is about to collapse. ... ... Jeremy Hunt refused to allow the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence or the Care Quality Commission to set a benchmark for safe numbers of nurses per types of wards or patients - but hospitals were allowed to hire temps, and costs soared. Nursing numbers never recovered from George Osborne’s first budget cutting nurse-training places. The 96% plunge in EU nurses joining the UK register following the Brexit vote could have been prevented had Theresa May rushed to embrace all NHS staff with a welcome to stay for ever. Hunt just announced an end to the 1% pay cap – but admits the money must come from squeezing “productivity improvements”: fewer nurses per ward is a statistical productivity gain. Bullying NHS trusts about their debts has now reached such a level that ... finance directors are forced to lie. The body that forces these improbable savings, turning the screw on mounting trust debts, is NHS Improvement. A new chair has just been announced, subject to approval, and it is one of the most shockingly political appointments, even by this govt’s standards. Baroness Dido Harding takes the Tory whip in the Lords, is married to a Tory MP and she’s an old Oxford contemporary of David Cameron’s. She was chief executive of TalkTalk when a hacking outbreak cost the company £60m. She walked away with shares with a value of £7.5m, saying, “I’m a really big believer in chief executives not staying for ever.” Yet again the govt flies in a private sector executive with zero public service or NHS experience on the insulting assumption that private managers are always better than public managers. Polly Toynbee, The Guardian.

Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch

We are a team of experienced safety investigators, led by the chief investigator Keith Conradi. While HSIB is funded by the Department of Health and hosted by NHS Improvement, we operate independently of them and other organisations such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and NHS organisations. We investigate up to 30 safety incidents each year in order to provide meaningful safety recommendations and share what we learn across the whole of the healthcare system for the benefit of everyone who is cared for by it and works in it. Has signed and MoU with the DHSC and the General Dental Council. ref, ref

National Data Guardian

National Information Board

Porton Biopharma Ltd

Genomics England Ltd

Genomics England runs the 100,000 Genomes Project, which aims to sequence genomes from patients with a rare disease and their families, as well as patients with cancer. All the patients are with the NHS, and the focus is on improving treatment rather than developing profitable new drugs.

Genomics England works with industry through its "Discovery Forum", which promotes collaboration in, and access to, the data. See also: Government Databases, NHS England: Genomics, Gov.uk: Your Genomics Partner.

  • Nov.06.2019: DNA testing at birth will be available for everyone. Children will be able to have their DNA checked at birth under ambitious plans by the NHS that could save thousands of lives, health secretary Matt Hancock said. Parents will be asked if they want their babies tested to identify any inherited diseases, and whether they will have a high risk of illness in later life. Commercial companies will be using the data,ref but the govt does not disclose contractual information. John Reynolds, The Times.

National Institute for Health Research

We are the National Institute for Health Research. We fund health and care research and translate discoveries into practical products, treatments, devices and procedures, involving patients and the public in all our work.

INVOLVE

INVOLVE: INVOLVE is part of the NIHR and works across the NIHR to ensure that researchers, funders and the public are aware of the value and contribution of public involvement. INVOLVE provides advice and knowledge on the practical aspects of involvement. ref
INVOLVE was established in 1996 and is part of, and funded by, the National Institute for Health Research, to support active public involvement in NHS, public health and social care research. It is one of the few government funded programmes of its kind in the world. ref

Expert Committees

Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment

COMARE advises on the health effects of natural and man-made radiation, both ionising and non-ionising. gov.uk

Policies

ToDo: These should be in Health Policy and Social Care Policy

Cancer Research and Treatment

Carers' Health

Children's Health

Choice in Health and Social Care

Compassionate Care in the NHS

Dementia

End of Life Care

Harmful Drinking

Health and Social Care Integration

Health Emergency Planning

Long Term Health Conditions

Mental Health Service Reform

NHS Efficiency

Obesity and Healthy Eating

Patient Safety

Research and Innovation in Health and Social Care

Smoking

Timelines

<tr id="MoH">
2018
Conservatives (May)
DHSC: the Department of Health & Social Care was formally created after a Cabinet reshuffle through The Transfer of Functions (Health and Social Security) Order, taking over the functions of the DoH, and fully integrating Social Care into the department.[2]
Apr.2013 NHS England, formally the NHS Commissioning Board,[3] became an executive non-departmental public body. The DoH was given the role of scrutinising NHS services and commissioning.
Oct.2011
Cons/LibDem (Cameron/Clegg)
NHS Commissioning Board Authority was set up as a preparatory body to develop plans to create a full NHS Commissioning Board.[4]
1988
Conservatives (Thatcher)
DoH: the Department of Health and the Department of Social Security: the DHSS was split back into two govt departments, reversing the 1968 changes. doh.gov.ukArchive-org-sm.svg, dh.gov.ukArchive-org-sm.svg logo
1968
Labour (Wilson)
DHSS: the Department of Health & Social Security was created from the functions of the MoH and those of the Ministry of Social Security. Both the MoH and the MSS were then dissolved.
Jul.1948
Labour (Attlee)
NHS: the National Health Service was established from the developments which took place during the war years.
1935‑1945 Co-ordination of local medical services was expanded in connection with emergency and wartime services.
1919
Liberals (Lloyd George)
MoH: the Ministry of Health was formed by the Ministry of Health Act 1919. It consolidated Central Govt's medical and public health functions, and the co-ordination and supervision of local health services in England and Wales, under a single authority.
The MoH was also responsible for the oversight and co-ordination of the National Health Insurance system, and of contributory old age pensions and widows and orphans pensions. The MoH assumed the powers and duties of the English and Welsh National Health Insurance Commissions. These it discharged through its insurance department and through the Welsh Board of Health. The Irish National Health Insurance Commission was transferred to the control of the Chief Secretary for Ireland and, in Jul.1919, the Scottish Commission's powers were given to the new Scottish Board of Health.
1911
Liberals (Asquith)
National Health Insurance was introduced, albeit in a limited form, by the National Insurance Act 1911. It created a national system of insurance to protect working people against loss of income relating to sickness or unemployment (thereby reducing the demand on Poor Law assistance). Four National Health Insurance Commissions for England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland were appointed by the Treasury to administer the scheme through approved societies and local insurance committees.
1896
Conservatives (Gascoyne-Cecil)
The Local Government Board took over the Privy Council's powers under an Act of 1876, which required the examination of persons from infected places. The Quarantine Act was also repealed.
1876
Conservatives (Disraeli)
A Public Health Department of the Local Government Board was established to deal with public health administration. It also took charge of the vaccination functions taken over from the Privy Council Office and the Poor Law Board in 1871. It maintained formal contact with local authorities and local medical officers of health, and was also responsible for the administration of the medical inspection provision of the Alien Acts.
1871
Liberals (Gladstone)
A Local Government Board was formed from the merger of the Poor Law Board, the Home Office's Local Government Act Office, and the Privy Council Office's medical department, under the Local Government Act 1871. The LGB had primary responsibility for the supervision of local govt services.
1858
Conservatives (Smith-Stanley)
The Local Government Act Office was established as a sub-department of the Home Office by the Local Government Act 1858. The Public Health Act 1858 (which replaced the Public Health Act 1848) abolished the General Board of Health, with the LGAO taking over most of its powers, and the remainder passing to the Local Boards as a measure of decentralization. Medical duties passed to the Privy Council's emerging medical department.
1854-1858
Whigs (Palmerston)
The General Board of Health was reconstituted with a president responsible to Parliament. It was empowered to create Local Boards of Health in areas of high mortality, which were concerned with sanitation, sewerage, drainage, water supply, streets, burial grounds and regulation of offensive trades.
1843-1848
Conservatives (Peel)
A General Board of Health was established by the Public Health Act 1848, itself the result of reports in 1844 and 1845 by the Royal Commission on the Health of Towns and Populous Places.
1831-1832 A Central Board of Health replaced the consultative Board at the Privy Council Office, with an advisory committee of physicians at the Royal College. The CBH established ~1,200 local Boards of Health. In 1832, as the danger of cholera passed, the CBH was dissolved and the local Boards also disappeared.
early.1831
Whigs (Grey)
A consultative Board of Health was established at the Royal College of Physicians, under the auspices of the Privy Council, due to fears of a cholera epidemic.
1825
Tories (Jenkinson)
The Privy Council Office had acquired responsibilities for dealing with quarantine, which were consolidated in the Quarantine Act, Jun.1825Archive-org-sm.svg.
1805
Tories (Pitt the Younger)
A Board of Health was established by the Privy Council Office to advise it on action to prevent the spread of fever to Britain from Spain and Gibraltar.
Additional Sources: Health Departments. The National Archives, NDAD. Original archived on Nov.06.2006.
ToDo: Developments in Public Health & Welfare

Articles

  • Mar.15.2018: UK deaths up by 10,000 over seven weeks. 10,000 more people died in the first 7 weeks of this year than expected, the biggest difference since WWII. Loneliness, overstretched hospitals and the crumbling elderly care system could all be contributing to a sharp increase in deaths, which suggests that British life expectancy is about to start falling. Infant mortality has also risen, with dozens more babies dying in 2016 than the previous year. Chris Smyth, The Times.
  • Mar.12.2018: Cutting-edge NHS drugs do more harm than good Saving a life with a new drug can cost about twice as much as doing the same through more staff or equipment, according to official calculations that led to calls for reform of the way the NHS pays for medicines. But drugs are assessed using a more generous formula than other types of NHS spending. Ministers are consulting on tightening the rules on vaccines to bring them into line with other spending by reducing the threshold at which they are judged cost-effective, leaving NICE as an anomaly. Nice approves medicines for NHS use if they cost less than £30,000 for each year of good quality life they offer and in practice very few cost below £20,000. Nice is often criticised for rejecting drugs as too expensive but a large study three years ago concluded that it costs the NHS less than £15,000 to provide a year of good quality life through existing treatments. Richard Torbett, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said: “I fundamentally disagree with the assertion that anything above £15,000 does more harm than good”, arguing that the data was not good enough. Chris Smyth, The Times.
  • Mar.08.2018: Health can last 30 years longer in well-off areas. Living in the wrong part of town can cost people a quarter of a century of healthy life, the Office for National Statistics has found. The biggest gap across the country is more than three decades, in the latest evidence that the rich are living ever longer while the lives of the poor become sicker and shorter. "This health life expectancy gap is shocking and it is growing. A large part of the reason is migration". Chris Smyth, The Times.
  • Nov.29.2016: Jeremy Hunt Slammed For Raiding NHS Repair Funds As Hospitals Crumble. £1.2bn NHS cash was quietly shifted from capital to current spending in the Autumn Statement. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has been slammed for using money intended for building projects on day-to-day spending instead, as overdue hospital repairs mount up. Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth pointed out that the NHS “high risk” repair bill has rocketed by 69% in the past year, and called new investment "critical". The sum needed prevent “serious injury” and “catastrophic failure” in hospitals has increased from £458 million to £775.5m in the past year. The Care Quality Commission has warned that we are approaching a “tipping point” in social care. Martha Gill, HuffPost News.

References