Our Organisations

We are the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and we encourage care services to improve.

We monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and we publish what we find, including performance ratings to help people choose care.

We work in the following ways:

Making sure services meet fundamental standards that people have a right to expect whenever they receive care.

Registering care services that meet our standards.

Monitoring, inspecting and regulating care services to make sure that they continue to meet the standards.

Protecting the rights of vulnerable people, including those whose rights are restricted under the Mental Health Act.

Listening to and acting on your experiences.

Involving the public and people who receive care in our work and working in partnership with other organisations and local groups.

Challenging all providers, with the worst performers getting the most attention.

Making fair and authoritative judgements, supported by the best information and evidence.

Taking appropriate action if care services are failing to meet fundamental standards of quality and safety.

Carrying out in-depth investigations to look at care across the system.

Reporting on the quality of care services, publishing clear and comprehensive information, including performance ratings to help people choose care.

For more information visit: http://www.cqc.org.uk/.

We help people to live better for longer. We lead, shape and fund health and care in England, making sure people have the support, care and treatment they need, with the compassion, respect and dignity they deserve.

Our responsibilities:

We lead across health and care by creating national policies and legislation, providing the long-term vision and ambition to meet current and future challenges, putting health and care at the heart of government and being a global leader in health and care policy.

We support the integrity of the system by providing funding, assuring the delivery and continuity of services and accounting to Parliament in a way that represents the best interests of the patient, public and taxpayer.

We champion innovation and improvement by supporting research and technology, promoting honesty, openness and transparency, and instilling a culture that values compassion, dignity and the highest quality of care above everything.

Above all, DHSC encourages staff in every health and care organisation, including our own, to understand and learn from peoples’ experience of health and care and to apply this to everything we do.

For more information visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health

We are the UK’s independent regulator of treatment using eggs and sperm, and of treatment and research involving human embryos. We set standards for, and issue licences to, centres.

We strive to:

Be an effective regulator commanding stakeholder confidence by ensuring compliance with the law;

Inform patient choice, securely hold personal data and maximising public understanding (of available and developing treatments, embryology research and the HFEA and its role);

Encourage consistently high quality standards of treatment and research in the sector by putting the patient experience first;

Be an effective organisation with strong governance that adds value and reduces bureaucracy;

Ensure the HFEA and the sector keep abreast of new scientific and research developments through continued collaborative working with scientific and professional bodies; and

Recognise and address the needs of the HFEA’s many and varied audiences and specifically to consider the patient experience in all our work.

For further information visit: http://www.hfea.gov.uk/

We regulate organisations that remove, store and use human tissue for research, medical treatment, post-mortem examination, education and training, and display in public. We also give approval for organ and bone marrow donations from living people.

The interests of the public and those we regulate are central to our work. We build on the confidence people have in our regulation by ensuring that human tissue and organs are used safely, ethically and with proper consent. There are many different types of human cells and tissue, including skin, body parts, organs, and bone. Bodies, organs, tissue and cells can be used for many purposes including:

Treating patients with particular medical conditions;

Transplanting into people whose organs have failed;

Treating patients who have blood disorders like leukaemia with stem cells;

Researching causes and treatments for illnesses, such as cancer or diseases of the brain and nervous system;

Teaching students about the human body and training to develop the skills of surgeons;

Display in public, such as exhibitions and museums; and

Finding out through post-mortem examination why someone has died, including examining their organs and tissue samples to determine the cause of death.

For further information visit: https://www.hta.gov.uk/

We regulate medicines, medical devices and blood components for transfusion in the UK.

Recognised globally as an authority in its field, we play a leading role in protecting and improving public health and support innovation through scientific research and development.

We are responsible for:

Ensuring that medicines, medical devices and blood components for transfusion meet applicable standards of safety, quality and efficacy;

Ensuring that the supply chain for medicines, medical devices and blood components is safe and secure;

Promoting international standardisation and harmonisation to assure the effectiveness and safety of biological medicines;

Helping to educate the public and healthcare professionals about the risks and benefits of medicines, medical devices and blood components, leading to safer and more effective use;

Supporting innovation and research and development that’s beneficial to public health; and

Influencing the UK, EU and international regulatory frameworks so that they’re risk-proportionate and effective at protecting public health.

For further information visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/medicines-and-healthcare-products-regulatory-agency

We provide national guidance and advice to improve health and social care. Our role is to improve outcomes for people using the NHS and other public health and social care services.

We do this by:

Producing evidence based guidance and advice for health, public health and social care practitioners;

Developing quality standards and performance metrics for those providing and commissioning health, public health and social care services; and

Providing a range of informational services for commissioners, practitioners and managers across the spectrum of health and social care.

For further information visit: https://www.nice.org.uk/

We provide a blood and transplant service to the NHS which means supplying enough safe blood to hospitals in England and North Wales and providing tissues and solid organs to hospitals across the UK. Each year donors give around two million donations of blood and 3,500 organs – saving and transforming countless lives.

Safeguarding blood supply and increasing the number of donated organs involves collecting, testing, processing, storing and delivering blood, plasma and tissue to every NHS Trust in England and North Wales. We also match, allocate, audit and analyse organ donations across the whole of the UK.

We are responsible for:

Promoting blood, tissue and organ donation to the public;

Managing the supply of blood to hospitals in England and North Wales;

Managing organ transplantation in the UK;

Managing the British Bone Marrow Register;

Working with hospital colleagues to promote the safe and appropriate use of blood;

Providing a range of tissues and other services to hospitals; and

Provision of a wide range of diagnostic services.

For further information visit: http://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/

We provide a range of critical central services to NHS organisations, NHS contractors, patients and the public.

Our service portfolio includes:

Management of the NHS Pension Scheme in England and Wales;

Administration of the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) scheme in the UK;

Management of a 10-year outsourced Master Services Agreement (MSA) for the delivery of supply chain services to the NHS;

Provision of strategic procurement and contract management expertise on Department of Health (DH) supply chain strategic contracts and programmes across the health sector;

Payments to pharmacists in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care;

Payments to dentists for work undertaken on NHS contracts in England and Wales;

Provision of management information to over 25,000 registered NHS and DH users on costs and trends in prescribing and dental care in England and Wales;

Provision of the NHS Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (in partnership with NHS Connecting for Health) for use throughout the NHS (in both primary and secondary care) as a means of uniquely identifying the specific medicines or devices used in the diagnosis or treatment of patients;

Compilation, publication and distribution of the NHS Drug Tariff for England and Wales. Approving the list of medical devices and chemical reagents that appear in the Drug Tariff and determining the price of those products;

Administration of a range of health related services across the UK, including a Low Income Scheme, Medical and Maternity Exemption Schemes, Tax Credit NHS Exemption Cards (in the UK) and Prescription Pre-payment Certificates (in England);

Management of the NHS Student Bursaries in England;

Management of the Social Work Bursaries Scheme in England;

Management of the NHS Injury Benefit Scheme in England and Wales;

Provision of a range of hosted employment, human resources and financial services for various DH teams and programmes; and

Provision of NHS Protect services (in England and Wales).

For further information visit: http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/Index.aspx

We are the national provider of information, data and IT systems for commissioners, analysts and clinicians in health and social care.

For more information, visit: http://digital.nhs.uk/

We lead the National Health Service (NHS) in England. We set the priorities and direction of the NHS and encourage and inform the national debate to improve health and care.

We want everyone to have greater control of their health and their wellbeing, and to be supported to live longer, healthier lives by high quality health and care services that are compassionate, inclusive and constantly improving.

We share out more than £100 billion in funds and hold organisations to account for spending this money effectively for patients and efficiently for the tax payer.

A lot of the work we do involves the commissioning of healthcare services in England. We commission the contracts for GPs, pharmacists, and dentists and we support local health services that are led by groups of GPs called Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). CCGs plan and pay for local services such as hospitals and ambulance services.

We strongly believe in health and high quality care for all, now and for future generations.

We create the culture and conditions for health and care services and staff to deliver the highest standard of care and ensure that valuable public resources are used effectively to get the best outcomes for individuals, communities and society for now and for future generations.

For more information visit: https://www.england.nhs.uk/

We exist to support the delivery of excellent healthcare and health improvement to the patients and public of England by ensuring that the workforce of today and tomorrow has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours, at the right time and in the right place.

Our work covers a range of professions, programmes and activity, from planning and commissioning, to recruiting and developing healthcare staff in a range of healthcare and community settings.

As the organisation responsible for the education and training of the healthcare workforce, our contribution to embedding research and innovation within the NHS is also crucial.

For further information visit: https://www.hee.nhs.uk/

We promote and protect the interests of patients in health research and to streamline the regulation of research. We aim, with partners, to make the UK a great place to do health research, to build confidence and participation in health research, and so improve the nation’s health.

Our purpose is to protect and promote the interests of patients and the public in health research.

For further information visit: http://www.hra.nhs.uk/

NHS Improvement is responsible for overseeing foundation trusts and NHS trusts, as well as independent providers that provide NHS-funded care. We offer the support these providers need to give patients consistently safe, high quality, compassionate care within local health systems that are financially sustainable. By holding providers to account and, where necessary, intervening, we help the NHS to meet its short-term challenges and secure its future.

From 1 April 2016, NHS Improvement is the operational name for an organisation that brings together:

Monitor

NHS Trust Development Authority

Patient Safety, including the National Reporting and Learning System

Advancing Change Team

Intensive Support Teams

We build on the best of what these organisations did, but with a change of emphasis. Our priority is to offer support to providers and local health systems to help them improve.

For more information visit: https://improvement.nhs.uk/

We protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.

We are responsible for:

Making the public healthier by encouraging discussions, advising government and supporting action by local government, the NHS and other people and organisations;

Supporting the public so they can protect and improve their own health;

Protecting the nation’s health through the national health protection service and preparing for public health emergencies;

Sharing our information and expertise with local authorities, industry and the NHS to help them make improvements in the public’s health;

Researching, collecting and analysing data to improve our understanding of health and come up with answers to public health problems;

Reporting on improvements in the public’s health so everyone can understand the challenge and the next steps; and

Helping local authorities and the NHS to develop the public health system and its specialist workforce.

For more information visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/public-health-england/