NHS health check prevention scheme highly praised

The government’s national vascular disease prevention scheme has been hailed a ‘remarkable success’ following a British Medical Journal (BMJ) report which claimed it had prevented at least 2,500 heart attacks and strokes over the past five years.

The report revealed that the NHS Health Checks programme had resulted in more cases of hypertension, diabetes and kidney disease being picked up and more referrals for alcohol addiction.

However, some GP critics have dismissed the scheme as a ‘waste of money’, claiming it failed to reach those who were most at risk and most likely to benefit from preventative interventions.

The study was led by researchers at Queen Mary University and covered a four-year time span between 2009-13. It found that 12 per cent of the 1.68 million people who received an invite actually attended the health check.

Furthermore, just 1.5 per cent of those sent an invite were found to be at high risk of vascular disease on the basis of a QRISK2 score of 20 per cent or higher. One in five of this figure ended up on a statin while nine per cent were put on antihypertensive therapy.

Despite this, the team estimated that if one million more people attended the checks from 2010, then ‘2,529 people would avoid a major cardiovascular disease event over a five-year period’ as a result of the scheme.

Lead author Dr John Robson, a GP in Tower Hamlets and clinical lead for the clinical effectiveness programme at Queen Mary University London, said: “These estimates are entirely based on the reductions resulting from drug treatments and take no account of reductions from smoking cessation, or changes in diet and physical activity.

“So [they] are likely to underestimate the true impact of the NHS Health Check.”

Robson added that the uptake ‘remains highly variable’ but argued that ‘if all CCGs came up to the level of the best, the current estimate would double to over 5,000 in five years’ and that ‘overall the NHS Health Check programme has been a remarkable success story’.

However, Dr Paul Cundy, a GP in Wimbledon and chair of the GPC’s IT subcommittee, contended the study failed to focus on those who were most at risk.

He said: “The rate of risk factors being identified in the attendees was less than in those refused the invite but attended for other reasons. This is a well-known phenomenon, those most interested in their health, and therefore more likely to be healthier, are more likely to respond to an invite.”

“At the moment it’s a waste of money, the money would be better spent if they allowed GPs to use their knowledge of their patients to focus in on only those that are likely to benefit.”