Published:2024-10-01
Publisher:Legal Action Group
Series:Community Care
NOTE: Publishes October 2024 - print version available for pre-order
'With the ever changing landscape of health legislation, the first edition of NHS Law & Practice was a welcome and much used resource. I am delighted to see the expanded second edition coming on stream. It is a comprehensive text that will be of enormous benefit to healthcare practitioners.' Dawn Brathwaite, Mills & Reeve LLP
'The first edition of NHS Law & Practice provided an easily digestible and user friendly text; it has been the place first any lawyer has looked when providing advice to NHS organisations. The breadth of experience of the team creating the text is evident in the clarity with which topics are presented and articulated. The second edition will be invaluable in ensuring that we, as an NHS organisation, can understand how the law has changed and provide the best advice to our clients. NHS Law and Practice is the first book I would recommend, without question, to anyone working in healthcare law.' Abigail Combes, NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB
'The first edition of NHS Law & Practice has been the ‘go to’ source of legal knowledge for any lawyer focussing upon the NHS for a number of years, so the BMA’s legal team welcome the publication of this second edition to ensure our knowledge remains up to date.' Gareth Williams, Director of Legal Services, BMA
Although the National Health Service is perhaps the most important public service provided by the British state, its complex structures can make it the most difficult public service to understand. There is no single public body called the ‘National Health Service’ and no single legal regime that governs how NHS bodies should operate. Instead, the NHS is made up of a complex network of public bodies that operate as commissioners of NHS services who contract with NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts, private businesses and charities that all provide medical, dental and other services to NHS patients. The NHS ‘managed market’ is overseen by both economic and care quality regulators. The rules under which commissioners, providers and regulators operate are both inaccessible and of such complexity that they can be impenetrable for even the most specialist lawyers.
NHS Law and Practice 2ed describes the large and complex legal structures of the modern NHS. It explains the legal relationships between NHS commissioners and primary care, community and acute providers of NHS services, as well as explaining the structure of NHS regulation. This book provides a detailed guide to enforcing patients’ legal rights around NHS Continuing Healthcare, patient choice and the rules around NHS personal budgets.
Contents
Part I Introduction to the NHS in England
1. Introduction to legal structures of the NHS
2. The purpose and effect of the NHS Constitution
Part II The roles and responsibilities of NHS bodies
3. The powers and duties of the Secretary of State
4. The powers and duties of NHS England
5. The powers and duties of Integrated Care Boards and Integrated Care Partnerships
6. Public health
7. NHS provider Trusts and Special Health Authorities
8. NHS regulators
Part III The commissioning, provision and accessing of NHS services
9. Commissioning NHS services
10. NHS acute care contracting
11. Primary medical care contracting
12. Patient choice and related rights
13. The Responsible Commissioner
14. Direct Payments and Personal Health Budgets
15. Who can access NHS care: charges for overseas visitors
16. NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS-funded nursing care for adults
17. Continuing Care for Children
18. Reconfiguration of NHS services
19. GP practice management
20. Community dental services
21. NHS complaints and the Health Service Commissioner
22. The impact of procurement law in the NHS
23. Medicines and medicinal products within the NHS
24. Planning and the NHS
Edited and written by a team of specialist lawyers whose involvement with NHS law and many of the leading cases over decades has given them unrivalled expertise in NHS and healthcare law. This book will be an essential text for anyone who needs to understand how the legal structures of the NHS currently operate and how they should operate.