Is the NHS getting better?

A recent report concludes that the NHS is showing clear signs of improvement. The report is by the NHS Modernisation Board, a government body, it is true, but one that is chiefly made up of working doctors, nurses and other professionals and representatives of interest groups and trades unions.

The Board is tasked with checking progress against the targets set in the government's all-embracing NHS Plan announced last April. This Plan aimed to spend up to ?105.6 Billion on the NHS by 2007/08; a figure that would represent around 10% of UK Gross Domestic Product.

The report records that 98% of suspected cancer patients are seen by a Specialist within two weeks of an urgent referral by their G.P. This is almost in line with the Plan's target of 100% and must, in part, be because the number of cancer Specialists has increased by 500 since 1998; a quarter of the way to the numbers envisaged by the Plan by 2006. Overall, death rates from cancer are down 6% since 1998.

The position on heart disease is even better with deaths lower by 14% over the same period. The report states that at December 2002 only 212 patients had been waiting longer than nine months for heart surgery and that all of these, and anyone else waiting upwards of six months, had been offered alternatives to staying on the waiting list of their local hospital. The NHS Plan expects that by 2005 no one should wait more than three months for routine heart surgery.

On general waiting list times, the report states that numbers waiting more than 12 months were down 61% since October 2001 and that patients waiting more than 5 months had fallen 21%. Really excessive waits had been virtually eliminated with only nine patients waiting more than 15 months compared to 8,075 a year ago.

There must be some suspicions as to the validity of waiting list statistics following recent exposures of blatant corruption in the way that a few authorities have reported their figures. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the additional funding is starting to show a return. What does this mean for the consumer of private medicine? Well, good news in this area should be good news for us all since none of us has a choice when it comes to paying the entry ticket to the NHS. It may cause those with access to private care to be more comfortable about using the NHS rather than claiming privately. If so, it will have some effect on private care incidence and so help to moderate premium/cost increases.

The cancer and heart disease statistics are particularly relevant in this context as, per claim, these are the highest cost illnesses treated privately. Effectively removing waiting lists for cancer treatment may cause decision makers in corporate schemes to consider whether this particular benefit could be removed without greatly prejudicing the well-being of their employees. What would give more confidence would be some hard data on the success rates of different treatment centres. It is known that these vary greatly around the country with, it appears, no clear divide between public and private sector.

Finally, a big question mark on all of this good news must be the viability of the planned levels of funding in the short and medium term economic climate. The Chancellor took an optimistic view of the prospects for growth when the NHS Plan was announced with the budget last year. Events since then have not gone in his favour. We shall see...!