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UK and US could benefit from sharing health ideas

Friday 12th October 2012
UK and US could benefit from sharing health ideas
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    The US healthy system and NHS could stand to benefit should they share ideas while they are both going through reforms, two thinktanks have suggested.

    Harvard University in the US and Nuffield Trust, based in the UK, believe that officials from either side of the Atlantic could learn valuable lessons from the other as they strive on pushing through their own forms of regulation.

    Both countries have experienced criticism of their health services with some in the US deriding the NHS as a way being "socialised medicine" even though it is available to everyone and is driven by taxes. In the US there is a more independent structure with every person responsible for arranging their own health insurance.

    Officials for the thinktanks believe that if the two were to work together and share ideas as they look push through new reforms then there could be many benefits for both sectors. Published in the Lancet, Dr Jennifer Dixon, director of the Nuffield Trust in the UK, notes that England could learn a lot from the US in terms of "transparency and analytical rigour required to assess growth in spending" when officials are predicting that the sector will have to experience cuts to save around £20 billion by 2015.

    "Comparing the US and England seems to be an unlikely project. Many people in both countries view the other as having a pariah health system that is not to be copied in any circumstance.

    "But both countries are under pressure to get more value out of health care spending and reduce growth in expenditure to sustainable levels and are consequently experimenting with new ways to encourage clinicians, patients and institutions to help achieve this," Dr Dixon added.

    This research comes at a time when health secretary Jeremy Hunt told delegates at his first major speech for the Conservative party in his new role that the UK needs to lead the way in terms of providing care for the elderly.

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    written by Alex Franklin StortfordADNFCR-1780-ID-801468688-ADNFCR

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