The state of the NHS

I know most CoffeeHousers aren’t particularly enamoured of paywalls, but the Times has given you a persuasive reason (£) to dive behind theirs today. (Or least to borrow a copy of the paper.) It’s the first of three reports by Camilla Cavendish on the NHS, this one concentrating on the Way Things Are Now. It is both a disheartening read and a powerful reminder of how taxpayers’ cash is being funnelled into a system that is dysfunctional in the extreme. Here is one snippet for your displeasure:

“Care in Britain ranges from world-class to shocking. Between 1998 and 2006, 1.6 per cent of bowel cancer sufferers died within a month at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, compared with 15.6 per cent at Queen’s Hospital, Burton upon Trent. The National Lung Cancer audit has just reported a sixfold difference in the proportion of lung cancer patients receiving potentially life-saving surgery in different parts of the country in 2009: 31 per cent at Barts, London, and only 5 per cent of patients at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. And Lord Darzi of Denham famously reported that Westminster and Canning Town were separated by eight stops on the Jubilee Line, but by a seven-year disparity in life expectancy. That is unacceptable. At a recent dinner, one clinical director told colleagues that he had chosen to undergo an operation at his own hospital. The majority of the other clinical directors said that they wouldn’t dream of choosing their own hospital. If they don’t trust it, they shouldn’t ask the rest of us to.”

To be fair to the government, they often spell out the underwhelming performance of the NHS themselves — even if they are not quite so damning, nor as comprehensive, as Cavendish is. But that’s the easy part. The more difficult task that faces them now, and a task they are struggling to fulfil, is twofold: ensuring that meaningful reforms emerge from the current legislative slush, and communicating how those reforms will improve the situation. The second ought to follow from the first, but the first is by no means certain.