5.4 Specialized ambulatory care/inpatient care
Most NHS secondary care is provided by salaried specialist doctors (known as
consultants) and others who work in state-owned hospitals. Patients may stay
overnight, depending on their condition and their doctor’s recommendation,
but there has been a move to increase the number of day cases across the
United Kingdom where appropriate. In order for patients to receive care from
specialists (i.e. consultants), they must be referred by a GP or admitted to
the hospital as an emergency case. Patients may pay privately for a private
consultation, but most still require a GP referral.
In England and Northern Ireland state-owned hospitals are called trusts.
Most hospitals in Wales are managed by local health boards, except for the
leading cancer centre, in Cardiff, which is part of an NHS trust. In Scotland
Health systems in transition United Kingdom 83
there have been no trusts since 2004; instead, NHS boards plan and oversee
the hospitals, while operating divisions handle their day-to-day management.
Under the PPP/PFI initiative some hospitals in Scotland are owned privately
and leased to the NHS, and the NHS runs the clinical services.
Foundation trusts are found only in England; they are independent
corporations that are locally run, with more control over budgets and hiring/
firing than non-foundation trusts. The cap on income that foundation trusts can
generate from private sources is currently set at 49% of all income.
In parts of the United Kingdom with large rural areas, especially Scotland,
secondary care is provided to people in those rural areas (if they cannot reach
hospitals) in the form of some specialist clinics in outlying areas and an
increasing use of telemedicine.
Acute elective care paid for by the NHS but carried out in the private sector
grew in England at the beginning of the decade, following the government’s
introduction of independent-sector treatment centres to drive down waiting
times. These are often co-located with NHS acute hospitals, and provide many
elective procedures.
In Wales especially, patients use hospitals across the border in England if
they are actually closer than the nearest one in Wales. Also, in the north and
central parts of Wales, where the population is sparser, people make use of
the specialized hospitals in England when necessary; in south Wales there are
enough people for there to be specialized services.
Because Northern Ireland’s health care system is so small, there are times
when complex or difficult specialist conditions need to be referred to other
health care systems in the United Kingdom that are better equipped to deal
with those issues.
One way in which NHS hospitals can add to their revenue across the United
Kingdom is to offer private hospital services on NHS sites and what are called
“amenity-beds” (facilities more comfortable than standard NHS facilities). For
these beds patients pay an amount that may be close to what they would pay at
private hospitals, but the care they receive is still provided through the NHS.
Tertiary services offer more specialized care, which is often also at higher
cost. They are generally found in higher density areas, and are often linked to
medical schools or teaching hospitals. Tertiary care services often focus on the
84 Health systems in transition United Kingdom
most complex cases and on rarer diseases and treatments. Across the United
Kingdom there has been a move to concentrate specialized care in fewer centres
in order to improve quality.
Patients usually choose to go to their local hospital, although for elective
care in England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, they can choose
to go to any hospital that provides services at NHS prices (including private
providers). This is rare in Scotland and Wales. Performance information is
made available so patients and their GPs can make informed decisions about
where to go.
Across the United Kingdom, leaders have tried to reduce waiting times,
which have historically been considered too long. The current English target
for elective surgery procedures is a maximum wait time of 18 weeks from
GP referral to start of treatment (this is known as the Referral to Treatment
standard). Waiting times have improved since this target was introduced in
2007, although 2014 saw the highest number of people in six years waiting
longer than 18 weeks for treatment in England (Smith, 2014). Waiting times for
most of the main inpatient procedures substantially decreased from 2005/2006
to 2009/2010 across the United Kingdom, although after that time the average
wait times in Wales increased (Bevan et al., 2014). Scotland also has an 18-week
Referral to Treatment standard, but it is working towards a 12-week wait time.
The Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011 established a 12-week waiting period