National Health Service (England) - Core Principles

Core Principles

The principal NHS website states the following as core principles:

The NHS was born out of a long-held ideal that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth. At its launch by the then minister of health, Aneurin Bevan, on 5 July 1948, it had at its heart three core principles:
  • That it meet the needs of everyone
  • That it be free at the point of delivery
  • That it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay
These three principles have guided the development of the NHS over more than half a century and remain. However, in July 2000, a full-scale modernisation programme was launched and new principles added.

The main aims of the additional principles are that the NHS will:

  • Provide a comprehensive range of services
  • Shape its services around the needs and preferences of individual patients, their families and their carers
  • Respond to the different needs of different populations
  • Work continuously to improve the quality of services and to minimize errors
  • Support and value its staff
  • Use public funds for healthcare devoted solely to NHS patients
  • Work with others to ensure a seamless service for patients
  • Help to keep people healthy and work to reduce health inequalities
  • Respect the confidentiality of individual patients and provide open access to information about services, treatment and performance

Read more about this topic:  National Health Service (England)

Famous quotes containing the words core and/or principles:

    It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt’s and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)