The Unreported NHS

Most of what we hear about the NHS in the national press might lead you to believe that our health service is second rate. It's perhaps therefore understandable that, in January of last year, David Cameron accidentally described it as such. And this same representation also usually suggests that it's not just second rate, but expensively and wastefully second rate too.

However, a look at the barely reported results from a patient survey of eleven countries published last year by the Commonwealth Fund, shows that on most criteria the NHS is in fact first class. We've selected some of the key findings below, showing UK performance against three other countries: France, Germany and the US.

Firstly, despite an emphasis in the press on stories of negligence, misdiagnosis, and errors in treatment or medication, the study suggests that the NHS is the one of the safest healthcare systems in the world - while the US results indicate that turning the NHS into a more competitive and fragmented system will actually make it less safe.

Mr Cameron has also suggested that the NHS "does not consistently deliver the patient-centred, responsive care we all want to see". However, UK patients almost unanimously seem to disagree with him.

Now, if you introduce a plethora of competing private companies into the system - responsive primarily to their shareholders - then perhaps that confidence and trust will start to erode.

But of course, you would expect some positive findings given the vast amount of money that we spend on the NHS - and especially after the apparently huge sums the previous government threw at it. The most recent figures from the OECD demonstrate the huge burden the NHS places on our economy.

Hang on a minute - even after the recent improvement in investment - it's still one of the least expensive and lower than all comparable EU and OECD countries. Altogether, it suggests that the NHS is a lot more efficient than many would have you believe - particularly compared to the other three countries, whose health systems, in different ways, the current government appears to want to emulate. The notion that the NHS is inefficent is also challenged by a further Commonwealth Fund study which ranks the NHS as the most efficent in a comparison with six other developed health systems.

It's perhaps most surprising that in spite of all the bad NHS news, most people in this country do recognise how good the NHS is. Not that it can't be improved, of course, but far less people in the UK believe it requires the kind of fundamental changes that the government is proposing.

David Cameron has argued that the Health Bill is 'evolutionary' in the very same statement in which he admitted it also amounted to a 'big change'. Almost every other observer has described the bill as the biggest shake-up in the history of the NHS - and this certainly isn't what the public want.

Back in January 2011, the Prime Minister corrected his 'second rate' slip by declaring that he meant that we "shouldn't be settling for second best". But on this evidence - and rapidly improving health outcomes - we hadn't been. Create a more fragmented and competitive system however, and the evidence suggests that second best might be the best we can hope for.

To read or download an extended version of this report, click on the cover image in the top right of this page.