Health

The National Health Service (NHS) should be privatised

Introduction

Privatisation means a transfer of a particular business or conglomerates from the public to private ownership and control. The aim of the study is to create an argument regarding should the NHS privatised or not. National Health Service (NHS) is a publically owned health and social care institution in England, providing efficient treatment and quality care to the social communities. There are many efficient employees, staff members, health care professionals, social care workers, nurse, doctors, general physicians and practitioners who are trying to maintain the standard of health and social acre service as well as maximise the welfare of the social communities by delivering better treatment and quality care to the individuals (Miller, and Powell, 2014). There are two aspects through which it is possible to demonstrate the need for privatisation in the NHS and the two factors are economic and social.

Economic aspect

The organisation, NHS aims at providing quality care and the best possible treatment to the people in England so that they can maximise their welfare and lead normal lives by mitigating the health and mental issues. The main issue in running the organisation is lack of funding from the organisation for which the quality and quantity of the health and social care system has been hampered (Burton, 2014). As per the economic perspectives, NHS sometime suffers from lack of funding for which the managers cannot improve creativity and technological innovation in the health and social care institution. Apart from that, after the incident of Brexit, the NHS did get any subsidies and it further adversely affects the quality of the health and social care service (The weekday newsletter, 2017). In this context, it is useful if the organisation is choosing the strategy of privatisation as it helps proper funding, increases creativity and technological innovation.

Privatised firm is efficient in providing training and development program to the staff members so that the knowledge of the employees can be improved. On the other hand, proper funding is necessary for increasing the quantity of health care instruments and strengthens the technological infrastructure. Economic support, proper budgeting and investment in health and social care organisation are the advantages of privatisation through which NHS can maximise the quality of the social care (Krachler and Greer, 2015). For example, the Sunrise health care system is private health care institution which is efficient in providing quality care and efficient treatment and the employees are also proficient in maximising the welfare of the social communities. Hereby, it can be concluded that, as per the economic perspective, the NHS should be privatised to mitigate the issue of funding and budgeting as well as increase technological infrastructure and innovation for serve better and care and treatment to the patients.

Social aspect

The social aspect is another important factor through which it can be evaluated that whether the NHS goes for privatisation or not. Considering the social aspect, there is increasing number of population in England who are concerned about the quality of the health and social care service. In the public hospitals, the environment is unhygienic and the nurses and employees are not well efficient to provide proper treatment and quality care to the patients. In the social context, the main issue of poor management in the public hospitals, unhygienic factors and low standard health care service (Naguleswaran et al., 2015). In this regard, if the NHS selects to privatise the organisation, it can improve the quality of health and social care service which is necessary to improve overall value for the social communities in England. Moreover, if the organisation is going for privatisation, the price of the health and social care service will increase which is another problems for the social communities to afford (Wheeler, 2013).

However, it has been seen that, there are huge numbers of people who prefer quality health care service rather than considering the price of the health care service. In this regard, privatisation may be useful for the NHS to improve the hygienic factors and quality of the health care service through more investment and technological advancement (The medical porter, 2018). Moreover, in such an era of digitalisation, all the business activities can be done through online data base and privatisation provides a scope to improve online activities and provide better treatment and quality care to the patients. Efficiency in protecting the data of the patients as well as improving the knowledge of the employees is useful to treat the patients proficiently (Coppin, 2017). Through privatisation, transparency and accountability can also be maintained in the NHS. It can be argued that, the NHS should go for privatisation in order to treat the patients fairly and provide quality social care.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that, both the economic and social factors have crucial impacts on the strategic planning of the NHS. As per the economic factor, the NHS should choose the strategy of privatisation for more research and development, investment for increasing the patient’s care, developing technological infrastructure and implementing more efficient health care instruments. On the other hand, as per the social factors, the organisation needs to improve the quality of care, maintain hygiene factors and hire efficient staff members for delivering effective treatment and quality care to the social communities. These strategies can be fulfilled through privatisation where it provides an opportunity to maintain standard of health care, maximising human rights and increasing investment in the health care technology for maximising values of social communities as a whole.

Reference List

• Burton, J., 2014. Partnership or privatisation? An NHS Trust's experience of sponsorship. Gastrointestinal Nursing, 12(2), pp.37-44.
• Coppin, F., 2017. The Big Debate: We need to privatise the NHS. [online] Available at: http://thebadgeronline.com/2017/03/big-debate-need-privatise-nhs/ [Accessed on 10 April 2018]
• Krachler, N. and Greer, I., 2015. When does marketisation lead to privatisation? Profit-making in English health services after the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Social Science & Medicine, 124, pp.215-223.
• Miller, R. and Powell, M., 2014. Why ‘privatisation of the NHS’(the term not the concept) should be banned. British Politics and Policy at LSE.
• Naguleswaran, K., Tribedi, T., Fenn, J. and Patel, S.B., 2015. This house believes the NHS should be privatised—1st southwest medical debate. [online] Available at: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s13010-015-0031-z.pdf [Accessed on 10 April 2018]
• The medical porter, 2018. NHS Hot Topics: Private Healthcare and Privatisation. [online] Available at: https://www.themedicportal.com/nhs-hot-topics-private-healthcare-and-privatisation/ [Accessed on 10 April 2018]
• The weekday newsletter, 2017. Pros and cons of privatising the NHS. [online] Available at: http://www.theweek.co.uk/nhs/63360/pros-and-cons-of-privatising-the-nhs [Accessed on 10 April 2018]
• Wheeler, B., 2013. Why not... privatise the NHS. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-22528719 [Accessed on 10 April 2018]