Department of Health and Social Care
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Alan Johnson welcomes Health Regulator's annual report
- Improvements in access to healthcare, falling infection rates and reducing deaths from cancer & heart disease -
The Healthcare Commission today praised the NHS for making significant improvements in services across the board in recent years.
The Commission's annual State of Healthcare report highlights huge strides in cutting premature death rates for the big three killers over the past decade. Early deaths from heart disease have halved, while the death rates for stroke and cancer have fallen by 44% and 18% respectively.
The report found:
* 95% compliance with national health standards
* Big
reductions in MRSA and C. difficile infection rates
* Dramatic
drops in waiting times
* Consistently high levels of patient satisfaction
It also highlights the scale of improvements in the NHS:
* The number of annual consultations in the health service has
risen from 219 million to 300 million since 1998
* Attendances
at A&E have risen from 14 million to 19 million since
2002/03
* NHS Direct answered 4.9 million calls in 2007/08 and
received more than 30 million visits to their website.
This is the Healthcare Commission's fifth and final report before the Care Quality Commission - a new single regulator for health and social care - starts work in April 2009.
Welcoming the report, Health Secretary Alan Johnson said:
"I would like to thank the Healthcare Commission for working so tirelessly to drive up standards in the NHS over the past five years. Their rigorous approach to regulation has undoubtedly been a catalyst for the dramatic improvements in services across the board, alongside the hard work of NHS staff.
"Long waiting times of 18 months to two years are a thing of the past, infection rates are falling dramatically and fewer people than ever before are dying prematurely from the three big killers - heart disease, cancer and stroke.
"We know there's more work to be done. That's why Lord Darzi's review of the NHS was so important. He recognised that after a decade of investment in staff and infrastructure the health service must now focus on what really matters to patients - ensuring care is safe, compassionate and personal to them. This is a big cultural shift for the NHS, but today's report shows the service is more than up to the challenge."
On patient safety, Health Minister Lord Darzi said:
"The NHS sees a million people every 36 hours. Unfortunately, as in any modern health service, mistakes and unforeseen incidents will happen. Only a very small number of errors put patients at serious risk.
"It is really encouraging to see that the overall compliance rate for core standards relating to safety is 92%. Failure to comply with all the standards does not necessarily mean that services are unsafe, but rather that some may not be meeting our high national standards.
"We know there's more work to be done and are leading the way worldwide, having set up the National Patient Safety Agency and established a reporting and learning system to encourage open reporting. The introduction of quality metrics and quality accounts, as part of the programme of work set out in my review of the NHS, will refocus the attention of the boards of NHS bodies on the quality and safety of the care their organisations provide.
"We are making it easier for front-line staff to report patient safety incidents by adding a new and more accessible portal for them to use. The NPSA has recently run a specific project around increasing primary care reporting and is working with key partners to support work in this area including exploring the potential of introducing thematic reporting of patient safety incidents for general medical practice."
