National Health Service (England)

National Health Service

Logo of the NHS in England[1]
Service overview
Formed	5 July 1948 (76 years ago) (1948-07-05)
Jurisdiction	England
Employees	1,348,584 FTE (August 2024)[2]
Annual budget	£190.3 billion (2022)[3]
Minister responsible	Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Parent department	Department of Health and Social Care
Website	www.nhs.uk

The National Health Service (NHS) is the publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare system in the world after the Brazilian Sistema Único de Saúde. Primarily funded by the government from general taxation (plus a small amount from National Insurance contributions), and overseen by the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS provides healthcare to all legal English residents and residents from other regions of the UK, with most services free at the point of use for most people.^[4] The NHS also conducts research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).^[5]

Free healthcare at the point of use comes from the core principles at the founding of the National Health Service. The 1942 Beveridge cross-party report established the principles of the NHS which was implemented by the Labour government in 1948. Labour's Minister for Health Aneurin Bevan is popularly considered the NHS's founder,^[6][7][8] despite never formally being referred to as such. In practice, "free at the point of use" normally means that anyone legitimately and fully registered with the system (i.e. in possession of an NHS number), available to legal UK residents regardless of nationality (but not non-resident British citizens), can access the full breadth of critical and non-critical medical care, without payment except for some specific NHS services, for example eye tests, dental care, prescriptions and aspects of long-term care. These charges are usually lower than equivalent services provided by a private provider and many are free to vulnerable or low-income patients.^[9][10]

The NHS provides the majority of healthcare in England, including primary care, in-patient care, long-term healthcare, ophthalmology and dentistry. The National Health Service Act 1946 was enacted on 5 July 1948. Private health care has continued parallel to the NHS, paid for largely by private insurance: it is used by about 8% of the population, generally as an add-on to NHS services.

The NHS is largely funded from general taxation, with a small amount being contributed by National Insurance payments^[11] and from fees levied by recent changes in the Immigration Act 2014.^[12] The UK government department responsible for the NHS is the Department of Health and Social Care, headed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The Department of Health and Social Care had a £110 billion budget in 2013–14, most of which was spent on the NHS.