The remedy of grievances in the National Health Service, with particular reference to the Health Service Commissioner for Scotland

MacDonald, Jean Elizabeth (1984) The remedy of grievances in the National Health Service, with particular reference to the Health Service Commissioner for Scotland. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the means by which citizens obtain redress when things go wrong in the National Health Service. There are many different ways of complaining the main emphasis in this work being on how complaints are dealt with by the Health Service Commissioner (HSC) or, as he is sometimes known, the NHS Ombudsman. The HSC came into being in 1974 some seven years after creation of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (PCA) on whom he is modelled. Perhaps .because of this the PCA has attracted more attention. Certainly, there is very little writing on the HSC per se This is unfortunate because, as succeeding chapters will make clear, the structure of the NHS and the state of the art of medicine pose some peculiar problems of their own. The first chapters then (Chs. 1-2) are necessarily of an historical and descriptive character. The thesis is divided into three parts. Part I (Chapters 1-2)˙discusses the background to the problem. Part II (Chapters 3-5) considers the HSC in detail. Part III (Chapters 6-7) Ch. 6 examines the work of the House of Commons Select Committee on the PCA on the PCA and its contribution to the effectiveness of the HSC, while Chapter 7 looks at other external agencies working in approximately the same field as the HSC.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Law, Health care management, Alternative dispute resolution
• Date of Award: 1984
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1984-76637
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 19 Nov 2019 14:00
• Last Modified: 19 Nov 2019 14:00
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/76637