Healthcare in Northern Ireland

The Health Care in Northern Ireland (HSC) is the designation of the publicly funded service responsible for the administration of the public health and other social care services in Northern Ireland. The government through this department is responsible for funding the service that is free of charge to all citizens of the Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The service provided by the HSC is expanded through the many hospitals in the entire region, providing service to the citizens of Ireland, and the rest of the UK. Patients simply have to walk in, state their name and date of birth, then they are provided with the treatment they might require and then they can leave being completely unaware of the costs incurred by them using the service. The department not only provides healthcare, it also provides social care as well.

However there are a few situations where a patient might require an outside source to get attention. The existence of private sector medical services is also available, where the service might be slightly better but where the pricing of the service is at times very expensive and inaccessible for people of lower middle class.

Yet the health care in Northern Ireland and the entire United Kingdom is well considered one of the most advanced in the world and in Europe. The ability to provide free public healthcare is one of the main achievements that constantly gets under appreciated, but it is definitely one of the many factor that have a great positive impact on the quality of life of the population.