Unit 6 History of the NHS Academic Poster

THE HISTORY OF THE NHS 2-DEC-20

Developed by Emma O’Casey

THE CREATION OF THE NHS.

1911 – The National Insurance Act provided compulsory healthcare insurance for low paid workers (but not their

families). A small sum would be deducted from the worker’s wage, the employer, and taxation. This contributed

to the N.I. scheme which provided a foundation for the NHS to follow 35 years later.

At the start of the Second World War - the government realised that to cope with the number of predicted

causalities the country would need to increase spending on healthcare. This also meant creating a plan for the

Labour’s Aneurin Bevan finally put the NHS into being.

1951 – Aneurin Bevan resigns over introduction of NHS

charges for dental and vision care.

1952 – Winston Churchill introduces one shilling NHS

prescription charge.

1954 – London lung cancer study. Sir Richard Doll’s findings prove a link between smoking and lung cancer.

1958 – The NHS’s first mass vaccination. Everyone

under the age of 15 vaccinated against polio and

diphtheria.

1967 - The Abortion Act legalises abortions up to 28

1977 – First MRI scan in the UK.

1983 – The Mental Health Act

legislates for the detention of people

deemed to be mentally ill and a risk to

themselves or others, with or without their

consent.

1983 – The first NHS-funded IVF service was

established at St Marys Hospital, Manchester. Since then, IVF babies have come to make up more than 2% of all

UK births.

1990 – First laparoscopic cholecystectomy (Key Hole surgery) in England performed by surgeon Mr David Rosin.

In 1944, before victory in Europe, the Ministry planned how the emergency hospital service would be

‘demobilised’. Bevan had worked out details, and the NHS had a formidable command structure. On its first day

in England and Wales, the NHS inherited 2,688 voluntary and municipal hospitals. Of the half million beds,

70,000 were already occupied by elderly people not in need of medical care. It was never going to be easy.

Worse still, in the previous 18 months, the country had endured restrictions more severe than during wartime,

suffered arctic weather, the worst flooding in 53 years, and unprecedented food and fuel shortages. Bread was

rationed for the very first time. Now, the health service had its biggest demand ever. And, from day one, it was

underestimated.

With medical research coming into vogue, and the role of the doctor analysed as never before, the country

embarked upon lavish health education campaigns. “Messages concentrated on the dangers in the home,

began to visit their GP. With new

technology, and medicine people

started to live longer. And people who

were unemployed, or unable to

contribute to funding, still had free

healthcare. People who had never worn

spectacles could now get a free eye

test, hearing, dentistry. Some provisions

were reduced almost immediately – and

charges for dentistry and vision care

hospitals across the country found it

hard to keep afloat. This meant a steep

and continuing increase in the use of

agency staff at a far higher cost.

Although keeping patients ‘in bed’ was

identified by some medical

researchers as a ‘cause of illness’ e.g. chest infections, long stays in hospital were still the norm - taking up

hospital beds, and staff time and resources.

Fortunately, technology was starting to change for the better. New equipment, and a much wider range of

pharmaceuticals was created, and old methods started to be reformed. The healing process was speeded up,

many types of cancers, and demand on the NHS was higher than ever!

These circumstances caused a further rise in demand on the NHS, and the Blair government embarked on an

ambitious programme of hospital building. The NHS still needed more specialists, and more research into new

and complex conditions, and effective treatments. Nurses and doctors were still in short supply. And more and

more people came to the NHS for more and more treatments.

Managing demand within the NHS will never be straightforward. It has struggled with demand from day one.

Perhaps it always will.

HOW CHANGES TO FUNDING IMPACTS THE NHS.

Since the NHS began, the biggest issue has always been funding. In its first years, the NHS was massively over

budget!

been prevented if progress in public health policy had not

stopped due to austerity, analysis by the Institute for

Public Policy Research found. Dean Hochlaf of the IPPR

said, "We have seen progress in reducing preventable

disease flatline since 2012." (Wikipedia Contributors,

2019)

While funding gets tighter, the NHS has to cope with

continuing increases in demand. For example: We all

know that prevention is better than cure – and far

cheaper. In figure 6, below, the reduction in sexual health

contraceptive services. King's Fund research found that between 2013/14 and 2017/18, total local authority

spending of sexual health services fell by 14% in real terms. This is despite the rapid rise in the spread of STIs,

including gonorrhoea and syphilis, that is a worrying trend being investigated by a Health and Social Care

Committee Inquiry. In November 2019, the IPPR estimated that spending on sexual health services had fallen

by £196.4 million from 2014/15 to 2018/19”

“At the end of 2018 £1bn of cuts to public

health services and the training of nurses

and doctors over the following year were

concealed within Government plans to boost

the NHS budget by £20bn by 2023… an

authorities, they found that: Almost £1 in

every £7 cut from public health services has

come from England’s ten most deprived

communities - compared to just £1 in every

£46 in the country’s ten least deprived

places. The total, absolute cuts in the poorest places have thus been six times larger than in the least deprived.”

(FUND OUR NHS, 2016)

Research shows that a majority of the

population would pay more in tax if it was

ring fenced for the NHS.