UK health results a’serious concern’: report 2023
A report celebrating the NHS’s 75th anniversary called the UK’s health indicators “serious concern” and below similar countries.
The King’s Fund charity evaluated the health systems of 19 similar nations and found that the UK has the highest stroke fatality rate and the second-worst heart attack fatality rate.
“It should be a serious concern for political leaders and policy-makers that the UK health system continues to fall behind so many of its peers,” stated the research, commissioned by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
“The UK performs worse than many of its peers on several comprehensive measures, including life expectancy and deaths that could have been avoided through timely and effective health care.”
Netherlands and Canada ranked highest.
“On healthcare outcomes specifically, both for outcomes that a system can control and those wider measures that rely on services that keep us healthy… we lag behind our peers,” said the report’s author, Siva Anandaciva.
“We’re not even close.”
The survey also stated that the UK had “strikingly low numbers of both nurses and doctors per person compared to its peers” and lacked capital investment and equipment.
The research does not include private sector CT and MRI scanners, however the UK has “far fewer units” than similar countries.
Japan has 166.7 scanners per million people
Compared to similar nations, the UK has four times fewer hospital and critical care beds per capita than Germany.
Anandaciva called capital infrastructure “absolutely crying out” for investment.
On July 5, England’s NHS will turn 75.
In 1948, it was the first universal, free-at-the-point-of-delivery health system.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, Britain had a greater mortality rate than France and Germany due to years of Conservative government underfunding the NHS.
Last Thursday, ex-finance minister George Osborne disputed that his austerity policies worsened the epidemic by underfunding the NHS. A national commission is investigating the government’s response.
