What is a health system?A health system is a system that delivers health related services to people. A good health systemis the one that delivers quality services to all the people that need them. But health system are not always good. In the poorest countries they haven't got enough money to provide a god health system and to help them there are some organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders. Luckily, we don't live in one of those countries, but that doesn't mean we don't have to worry about this huge problem.
Nowadays, our health system is very complex. It includes hosmitals, mental illnesses hospitals, firts aid centres... in this places there are doctors, nurses... And who pays for it? How does it work? |
Public or privateManaging a healthcare system is not esy and it's very expensive, for example: in Spain, it costs 58 billions of euros.
Depending on who pays the system and who manages it, a health system can be public or private, and in some countries there are mixed systems. |
Medical staffAs you know, in a hospital there are doctors, nurses, orderlies, cleaners... and they all work together to makethe hospital work. But each one has his function.
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Medical departmentsMedical staff has to specialise, they have to choose the specialisation they like and they have to delve into the kowledge they already have.
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Public or private
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In a private health system, a person or a group of people own the medical centres and this centres are like their business. When somebody goes to one of those centres, they have to pay for the the medical attention that they recieve. Usually, people have a health insurance to pay their medical attention, but if you cannot afford one, you won´t have the medical attention you need.
In a public health system, that is the one we have here, we have to py taxes to make the health system work, but we also earn the benefits: the health care. The public health system is cheaper and in Spain it covers the costs of the workers that contribute to the system, the people those workers have to take care of, unemployed people that have the government's help and retired people. In 2000 the WHO published a list of the best healthcare systems in the world. The first coutries had a public system or a mixed system (where a the public and private systems coexist). This ranking created a huge controversy because the US (which has a private system) was on the 37th position. Here at the left you have de ranking of the first 20 countries: 1. France: public and private systems coexist. 2. Italy: public system 3. San Marino: public system 4. Andorra: public and private, very similar to the French system 5. Malta: public system 6. Singapore: the public health system establishes the prices, but the medical attention is private. 7. Spain: public |
Medical staff
As I have said before, in hospitals a lot of people work together, but each one has his function.
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Medical departments
The medical staff has to specialise and chose a department to learn more about that subject and focus on it. It makes the health system more effective because the work is divided, so that the staff doesn't have to know everything about all the departments (that will be really difficut because it's too much information), and the patient will get a good attention because people of all the areas of the hospital work together.
Here you have some of the most common hospital departments
Here you have some of the most common hospital departments