This graphic is from the Guardian:
And this one is from the US-based Commonwealth Fund in 2017:
When you hear the right wing say the NHS is inefficient, it isn't. Nobody does it better with the resources they have got. To claim otherwise is to talk nonsense.
On the other hand, they can't work miracles and the reality is we don't get the healthcare we need, and that is down to money. We just don't spend enough to get gold standard care.
Is £20 billion enough extra? It helps. But it only helps.
And let's be clear, if all these other countries can find the resources then so can we. And we still don't need to raise extra tax to do so. This country needs to run a deficit.
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You seem to be saying that there is no difference in efficiency between NHS England and the equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Alas, the Commonwealth fund and other simplistic charts that include the US ( which no-one on the right seeks to emulate ) don’t drill down into the relative merits of the different flavours of the NHS model that we have.
But if they did, I find it a remarkable claim that you would not find one that was slightly ahead of the other 3 on efficiency.
Nobody does it better with the resources they have got. To claim otherwise is to talk nonsense.
There may be another NHS model to analyse soon e.g. Greater Manchester
And maybe there won’t be
In response to WHG’s post at 7.19am, this is a good point: the different NHS regimes in Scotland, England & Wales and N Ireland aren’t just separately run. They produce separate statistics and data. I’m not aware of any official figures aggregating all these bodies in all-UK data. This then begs the question of whether this chart conflates England & Wales with the whole UK (a very common occurrence and not just in data produced outside UK) , or has someone somewhere aggregated the separate data sets, which runs the risk of “apples and oranges” comparisons?
I suspect it is NHS England
Mea culpa! I’ve conflated Wales and England in my post above. Wales has a devolved parliament with responsibility for health matters in Wales, so NHS Wales is separate from NHS England. Apologies to Wales!
Considering the ratio between spending and performance, the NHS is doing very well.
Just imagine what could be achieved with decent spending!
As for France, whose reputation seems to be first class, ranking on almost all markers is pretty poor. Perception and reality…
It seems to me the NHS is already working miracles with the resources it gets, but a country like the UK, the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world, should look after its Public Health Service a lot better.
If it doesn’t, there must be an ulterior motive. Maybe it’s aim is to beat the U.S. ranking…?
There is very little joined up thinking really in health.
Is it deliberate?
If you keep funding the NHS but do not reign in the sugar industry, (alcohol, beverage and food producers), favour cars over bikes, sell off public land and sports fields for property speculation, think that the fast food industry should be growth engine for the economy, then you can always turn around and argue you’ve wasted your money on health spending as the voter continues to be more indolent and unhealthy.
It is Chomsky’s ‘manufacturing of consent’ all over again.
Little joined up thinking, yes, but a lot of industries lobbying with quite a bit of success.
May’s government, as others before, have only paid lip service to calls to restrain these industries’ lobbies.
The tobacco lobby is probably the one that has been battered the most, largely due to Health professionals and the public putting pressure on the government to reduce the damage.
The same pressure needs to be applied to the sugar lobby, but touch the kiddies’ mars bars and attacks on ‘the nanny state’ begin both from kiddies and sometimes even from parents. Dentists and nutritionists unite!
OK I will ask on your blog (I made the mistake of doing so on twitter). Just how are health outcomes defined and measured?
Life expectancy
Survival rates
In the main
There is a lot of waste and there is a tendency to empire build. Recent merge go Saffs Moorlands Trust 5 new band 8 management posts created no rise for staff not to mention leakage there is scope for improvement. Nut I do accept the broad thrust of your argument there Richard.
M
I would scarp the internal market, entirely
A lot of these posts are only required as a result of that farce
Agreed
Health outcomes don’t include things like unexpected deaths, readmissions etc.? And life expectancy is much more a genetic/social/life style outcome than a morbidity phenomenon. I need to look this up. Will come back to you when I have, unless someone can beat me to it.
I am battling to make sense of Commonwealth Fund health outcomes, apart from “healthy lives”. The UK is second last on this criterion. Is that what they meant?
The NHS Health Outcome Framework comprises 5 domains.
1: Preventing people from dying prematurely.
2: Enhancing quality of life for people with long-term conditions (Health-related quality of life for people with long-term conditions)
3: Helping people to recover from episodes of ill health or following injury, e.g. Emergency admissions for acute conditions that should not usually require hospital admission and emergency readmissions within 30 days of discharge from hospital
4: Ensuring that people have a positive experience of care
5: Treating and caring for people in a safe environment and protecting them from avoidable harm, e.g. deaths and severe harm attributable to problems in healthcare