ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at why and how the authors might do things differently–how health service delivery will possibly change. It starts by looking at the major pressures for change. Now the authors have the Patients' Charter and an expressed intention by government that there shall be information flowing to consumers which allows them to make better choices about what they want. Through health promotion activities there may be some compression of morbidity, but people will still get ill, although maybe in a shorter period of time at the end of their lives. Social services are increasingly involved in what was previously health service activity, and this will probably continue. The other item is the issue of occupation-less health–the health problems associated with long-term unemployment. A Danish futurist at recent World Health Organization meeting predicted only dire things in Europe in terms of civil unrest and local war that would be exacerbated by long-term unemployment, which is an unhealthy situation to be in.
