The Changing NHS

I thought you might be interested in seeing this very comprehensive comparative study of healthcare performance across 6 countries – USA, Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and United Kingdom. The study was done by The Commonwealth Fund – which is a highly regarded private research foundation in the States.

Drawn from 3 surveys that together cover the views of over 20,000 patients and physicians, the study has about 120 comparative ‘charts’ of data, covering lots of performance issues across 6 broad categories:

1. Quality of Care
2. Access to Care
3. Efficiency of Health System
4. Equity of Health System
5. Ability to Ensure Long, Healthy and Productive Lives
6. Views of the Health Care System: Physicians and Patients

You can see all 120 ‘charts’ here  From a quick scan, a few of the things that struck me about the UK system are:

1. We make much more use of nurses in routine care management of sicker adults (Chart 15)
2. We make much more use of multidisciplinary teams in primary care (Chart 18)
3. We score relatively poorly in measures concerning Patient Centered Care (Charts 39-44)
4. We are much more likely to set targets for clinical performance (Chart 46)
5. We can get much speedier access to a doctor than people living in the USA (Chart 56)
6. We have much better out of hours access than the USA (Chart 58)
7. If you have above average income then you are much less likely to have your blood pressure checked than someone with below average income, whilst the reverse is true in the States (Chart 105).

What ‘jumps out’ at you from flicking through these charts?

P. S. Many thanks to Paul Levy for drawing this data to my attention in his excellent blog - Running a Hospital

Steve

nhs

clinical performance

uk healthcare