NHS lags behind in treating common, life-threatening illnesses

An independent analysis produced for the BBC has reported that the NHS was a ‘below-average’ performer when it comes to preventing deaths from heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

The experts behind the report, which marks the NHS's 70th birthday, described the NHS as a ‘perfectly ordinary’ service produced for a ‘middling level of cost’, rather than being the ‘envy of the world’ as suggested by Nye Bevan in 1948.

Carried out by the Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the King’s Fund, the research finds that the UK had the lowest proportion of people who avoided healthcare due to cost, but of more concern, performed worse than average in the treatment of eight out of the 12 most common causes of death. This includes deaths within 30 days of having a heart attack and within five years of being diagnosed with breast cancer, rectal cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer and lung cancer.

The paper also found that the NHS is the third-poorest performer in cases where medical intervention should have prevented death, and had consistently higher death rates for babies at birth or just after (perinatal mortality), and in the month after birth (neonatal mortality). As widely reported, the UK also has fewer doctors, nurses, hospital beds and CT and MRI scanners than 18 other comparable countries.

Nigel Edwards, chief executive of the Nuffield Trust think tank, said: “Discussion about the NHS is often marked by an unhelpful degree of exaggeration, from those that claim it is the envy of the world to those who say it is inferior to other systems. The reality is a much more mixed picture, but one thing is clear: we run a health system with very scarce resources in terms of staff and equipment and achieve poor outcomes in some vital areas like cancer survival.”