Ann Oakley and Jonathon Barker (eds) (2004), Private Complaints and Public Health: Richard Titmuss and the National Health Service, Bristol: The Policy Press, 242 pp., £19.99 pbk, ISBN 1 86134 560 7

Recent changes in the philosophy and structure of the National Health Service give greater emphasis to the prevention of ill health within locally defined communities. Occupational therapists, by virtue of their unique philosophy, have an opportunity to influence primary care strategy and practice by highlighting the links between environment, occupation and health. The recent changes in the structure of the National Health Service are described and the philosophy of occupational therapy is discussed in relation to these changes. This description provides the basis for recommendations as to how occupational therapists can work to build a recognition of the fundamental importance of adaptive occupation to individual health and, hence, to health at a community and population level. Working at a community and population level will require occupational therapists to strengthen links with health promotion and public health in order to help promote health through meaningful occupations within local settings.

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Management accounting use and financial performance in public health-care organisations: Evidence from the Italian National Health Service

Health Policy ◽

10.1016/j.healthpol.2014.03.011 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 117 (1) ◽

pp. 98-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Manuela S. Macinati ◽

E. Anessi-Pessina

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Health Care ◽

National Health Service ◽

Health Service ◽

Financial Performance ◽

National Health ◽

Management Accounting ◽

Public Health Care ◽

Italian National Health Service ◽

Italian National Health

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Visions of utopia: markets, medicine and the National Health Service

Legal Studies ◽

10.1111/j.1748-121x.2009.00126.x ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 376-399 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

John Harrington

Keyword(s):

National Health Service ◽

Health Service ◽

National Health ◽

Fiscal Crisis ◽

Social Critique ◽

Medical Work ◽

Healthcare Provision ◽

Post War ◽

Richard Titmuss ◽

War Medicine

Legislative restrictions on the sale of organs, gametes and surrogacy services are often seen as having no basis other than mere prejudice or taboo. This paper argues instead that they can be read as instances of a broader decommodification of healthcare provision established in Britain with the creation of the NHS in 1948. Restrictions on the marketisation of medicine were justified by Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, and by Richard Titmuss, one of its chief academic defenders, in distinctly utopian terms. On this vision, the NHS would function as a utopian enclave prefiguring an idealised non-capitalist future. This commonsense of post-war medicine was fatally destabilised by fiscal crisis and social critique in the 1970s. Influential commentators like Ian Kennedy developed an anti-utopian account of the real NHS and proposed legalistic and market-based reform. These reforms sought to dissolve the enclave, assimilating medical work and the NHS as a whole to broader systems of accounting and accountability. Insofar as they have been realised, they achieve a recommodification of medicine in Britain. The paper concludes by examining recent studies of the ‘new NHS’, which see in the latter-day idealisation of market processes a novel form of self-denying utopianism.

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