National Health Service

The National Health Service (NHS) is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. The systems are primarily funded through general taxation rather than requiring insurance payments, and were founded in 1948. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom.

The individual systems are:

  • National Health Service (England)
  • Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland (HSENI)
  • NHS Scotland
  • NHS Wales

Only the English NHS is officially called the "National Health Service" however the other three services are referred to as "The NHS" in common speech.

Read more about National Health Service:  Structure

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