The NHS is one of the most treasured things in the UK. For nearly 75 years, it has been providing healthcare free at the point of use for millions upon millions of us, enabling us to live our lives free of fear over how we’ll afford the next illness or operation. It has kept families together, and helped them grow, for generations; today, it continues to do so, despite gutting financial cuts and endemic administrative mismanagement.
The NHS, beloved as it is, is beholden to strict regulation to provide its historic levels of patient care and treatment. This regulation applies to all healthcare facilities, including private enterprises (many of which share space and staff with NHS facilities). As someone entering the healthcare industry, it is important to understand healthcare from several perspectives. The legal and regulatory perspective is often overlooked, but here it is explored in essential detail.
Healthcare Regulation – An Introduction
There are numerous ways in which healthcare is regulated, from the basic regulation of workplace health and safety to the governance of best practices in primary care, surgery, and treatment of patients. Frameworks and processes are essential to the smooth and safe running of medical services, and when they fail, lives could be on the line. Indeed, the failure to adhere to essential regulatory infrastructure can hold medical professionals and facilities liable for failure in duty of care to patients.
As such, there are nine different regulatory bodies that oversee medical activity in hospitals and other facilities. Chief amongst these, perhaps, is the General Medical Counsel, which oversees doctors – and is set to oversee anesthesia technicians and physician associates. It is also important to acknowledge the Health and Safety Executive’s role in governing health and safety regulations for workplaces, medical facilities included.
Implementing Compliance Infrastructure
Implementing compliance infrastructure to ensure a minimum level of safety and acuity in medical facilities is, naturally, a complex endeavor. With up to ten regulatory bodies to contend with, there are many major rule sets and regulations to comprehend. No one healthcare industry executive can understand all that is required of them, which is where legal advice can be nothing short of indispensable.
Healthcare facilities must install some form of compliance officer to ensure correct measures are being taken, by regulatory and legal advice. This introduces accountability into the process, ensuring that legal and ethical obligations are being actively engaged with.
Towards a Compliant Future
While instituting compliance frameworks is a difficult enough task, maintaining them is especially difficult – and particularly so for NHS facilities, which continue to fold under the weight of underfunding and middle-management bloat. Maintaining high standards of care, health, and safety is not an easy task – and patients risk more with every passing year the healthcare crisis is not addressed.
