Postcode Lotteries in Public Health - The NHS Health Checks Programme in North West London

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Katherine F May¹  Clare EM Graley¹  David C McCoy¹ 

[1] Public Health Directorate, NHS Inner North West London, 15 Marylebone Road, NW1 5JD, Westminster, UK;

关键词: Health Check;    Random Blood Glucose;    National Guidance;    Health Check Programme;    FINDRISC Score;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-738

 received in 2011-04-08, accepted in 2011-09-28,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPostcode lotteries in health refer to differences in health care between different geographic areas. These have been previously associated with clinical services. However there has been little documentation of postcode lotteries relating to preventative health care services. This paper describes a postcode lottery effect in relation to the NHS Health Checks Programme (a national cardiovascular screening programme in England) in eight PCTs in the North West sector of London.MethodsA descriptive cross-sectional analysis of the Health Checks Programme was carried out in eight PCTs in North West London using a structured data-collecting instrument.ResultsThe analysis found variation in the implementation of the national Health Checks Programme in terms of: the screening approach taken; the allocated budget (which varied from £69,000 to £1.4 million per 100,000 eligible population); payment rates made to providers of Health Checks; tools used to identify and measure risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes; monitoring and evaluation; and preventative services available following the health check.ConclusionsThis study identifies a postcode lottery effect related to a national public health programme. Although it is important to allow enough flexibility in the design of the Health Checks Programme so that it fits in with local factors, aspects of the programme may benefit from greater standardisation or stronger national guidance.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Graley et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.