UK NHS: Business Environment & Strategic Management Case Study

This case study provides an analysis of the UK National Health Service (NHS), focusing on its current situation and strategic management. The report identifies the primary issue facing the NHS in England as a lack of funding, which impacts its ability to provide comprehensive and timely healthcare services to residents. The analysis delves into the reasons behind the funding shortfall, including the fact that service users do not directly pay for services, which limits the organization's ability to adjust prices in response to increasing demand. The report highlights the consequences of this issue, such as long waiting lists, diversion of operations to the private sector, and reduction in available hospital beds. The study concludes by emphasizing the need for increased government funding and provides recommendations such as meetings with government ministers, increased remuneration for healthcare professionals, and cost-effectiveness analysis of drug purchases to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the UK NHS.

Running head: BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Business Environment and Strategic Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
In this report, analysis of the the current situation of the UK National Health Service will be
performed. Apart from that, this report will effectively identify and analyze one of the major
problems faced by NHS in Britain. According to the case study provided, the chief issue faced by
the NHS in England is lack of funding. Apart from that this report will also contain
ecommendations that are being suggested to the mentioned organization so that it can cope up
with the mentioned issue and provide a better health service to the residents of UK.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Discussion:.......................................................................................................................................3
Current situation of UK NHS......................................................................................................3
Identification and analysis of a current issue...............................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
Recommendation.............................................................................................................................5
Reference List..................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction:
The National Health Service (NHS) can be referred to the name used by four public
health services in the UK, namely, NHS England, NHS Scotland, Health and Social Care in
Northern Ireland and NHS Wales. The chief principles of NHS include that the service provided
by the organization should be universal, comprehensive and free for the residents of UK (Murray
et al. 2013). However the dental and optical treatment provided by NHS requires the service
users to pay.
Discussion:
Current situation of UK NHS
The Britain NHS has provided a outstanding service to the residents of UK specially
during the time of economic uncertainty and dislocation since NHS assures that access to health
care is not related to the income of the service users. However since the last five years, Britain’s
National Health Service (NHS) is facing several dilemmas while providing health care services
the service users. The NHS England is heading into a critical financial crisis due to lack of
governmental funds. According to Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS, the organization
has not received the money it had requested for the year 2017 to 2020 and hence is facing
difficulties to meet the requirements of the service users (England 2016).
Identification and analysis of a current issue
As stated earlier, the chief issue faced by the Britain NHS is the provision and funding of
health care. The current budget of NHs in England is 105 billion dollars. This amount represents
only 18 percent of the current expenditure of the public. A majority of the funding of NHS is

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provided by the government of the UK that is from national insurance payment and taxation.
However, this funding available to the employees of the mentioned organization is not able to
provide the required facilities and treatments to the service providers. One of the chief reasons
behind this is the fact that service users are not directly paying the organization for the health
care service provided. According to theory of economy, in order to cope up with the increased
amount of demand, the price of the service provided should be raised to bring a equilibrium
(Brett et al. 2014). However due to the above stated reason, the NHS is not able to enhance the
price which is resulting in increased dissatisfaction and inconvenience of the service users. The
NHS was facing challenges with providing quick and efficient services to the service users and
as a result the high waiting list had attracted the attention of the media. In order to cope up with
the high waiting lists, some hospitals under NHS had diverted several operations to the private
sectors and as a result the cost of treatments exceeds the budget of NHS. In 2006, the NHS
recorded its highest overspend against budget and as a result was asked to treat limited amount of
patient. Apart from that, the number of available beds in UK hospitals under NHS has also
reduced due to lack of funding.

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Graph 1: Change in the number of available beds
Source (Goulding et al. 2012)
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discussion that UK NHS needs the help of the
government to deal with the issue of funding. The service users of UK are not able to get
necessary medical treatments and are also suffering from prolonged waiting in order to get the
service. This in turn is has resulted in consumer dissatisfaction an inconvenience. Thus the
management of UK NHS along with the government needs to work on increasing the funding of
the mentioned organization so that it a provide necessary facilities to the health care seeking
residents of UK.

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Recommendation
In order to deal with the issue of lack of funding, some of the suggested
recommendations are stated below.
 The management of UK should hold meeting with the ministers of UK government for
stating the issues faced by the organization. Government must focus on the development
of equipment, buildings and employees of the NHS.
 The remuneration of the service providers and health care professionals should be
increased so that they can provide more time to the service users who are availing NHS
facilities. It has been found that a good number of doctors are investing less amount of
time in hospitals for which several service users are facing difficulties in getting surgery
appointments at the weekends or in the evening.
 The cost effectiveness of the drug should be analyzed before purchasing in bulk. Drugs
which are highly costly but don’t have a huge amount of beneficial values should be
replaced by drugs that are comparatively less costly (Linley and Hughes 2013).

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Reference List
Brett, J., Staniszewska, S., Mockford, C., Herron-Marx, S., Hughes, J., Tysall, C. and Suleman,
R., 2014. A systematic review of the impact of patient and public involvement on service users,
researchers and communities. The Patient-Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, 7(4), pp.387-
395.
England, N.H.S., 2016. NHS ENGLAND. Evidence review: pasireotide for acromegaly as third-
line treatment (adults). Dostęp: https://www. engage. england. nhs. uk/consultation/clinical-
commissioningwave4/user_uploads/a03x11-pasiretd-evidnc-rep. pdf (28.12. 2016).
Goulding, L., Adamson, J., Watt, I. and Wright, J., 2012. Patient safety in patients who occupy
beds on clinically inappropriate wards: a qualitative interview study with NHS staff. BMJ Qual
Saf, 21(3), pp.218-224.
Linley, W.G. and Hughes, D.A., 2013. Societal views on NICE, cancer drugs fund and value‐
based pricing criteria for prioritising medicines: A cross‐sectional survey of 4118 adults in Great
Britain. Health economics, 22(8), pp.948-964.
Murray, C.J., Richards, M.A., Newton, J.N., Fenton, K.A., Anderson, H.R., Atkinson, C.,
Bennett, D., Bernabé, E., Blencowe, H., Bourne, R. and Braithwaite, T., 2013. UK health
performance: findings of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. The lancet, 381(9871),
pp.997-1020.

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