NHS progress ‘in decline for first time in 50 years’
NHS progress is going backwards for the first time in 50 years, a major report commissioned by the Government has found.
The report by Lord Ara Darzi, a surgeon and former health minister, will this week highlight failures in the most basic care offered by the health service.
It will criticise the amount of time children are left waiting in A&E and how the NHS’s routine services ground to a halt during the pandemic.
Lord Darzi will say that the progress made since the 1970s on deaths from heart disease and waiting times for treatment is now in reverse for the first time.
Within hours of Labour winning the election, Health Secretary Wes Streeting had declared the NHS “broken” and pledged to “turn our health service around”. He commissioned the report a week later.
It is expected to be instrumental in shaping the Government’s 10-year plan “to radically reform the NHS”.
Lord Darzi is particularly concerned about heart care, with heart disease one of Britain’s biggest killers.
Mortality rates from heart problems are now rising, having fallen steadily from the 1970s until 2010.
Waiting times for life-saving surgery for those suffering a heart attack have risen by a quarter and waits for treatment have gone backwards across all areas of the health service.
In an interview with the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Sir Keir Starmer said Lord Darzi was “really clear that the NHS is broken but not beaten”.
“His diagnosis, and my conclusion, is that the only way out of this now is reform,” Sir Keir said.
“I think only a Labour government can reform the NHS and therefore we will use his diagnosis as the platform for the reform that we now need to carry out in relation to the NHS.”
He added: “Everybody watching this who has used the NHS, or whose relatives have, knows that it’s broken.”
Lord Darzi’s report will be published on Thursday. It found that improvements in the cardiovascular disease mortality rate for people aged under 75 stalled in 2010 and started rising again during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In its submission to the investigation, the British Heart Foundation said: “We are extremely concerned that the significant progress made on heart disease and circulatory diseases (CVD) in the last 50 years is beginning to reverse.
“The number of people dying before the age of 75 in England from CVD has risen to the highest level in 14 years.”
Deaths from heart disease have gradually fallen over the last 50 years to a low of 71 per 100,000 people in 2019, according to the British Heart Foundation. The premature mortality rate has risen since then to 79 per 100,000.
Lord Darzi’s investigation also found that there are wide variations in the standard of care patients receive from the NHS depending on where they live.
It will say: “The time for the highest risk heart attack patients to have a rapid intervention to unblock an artery has risen by 28 per cent from an average of 114 minutes in 2013-14 to 146 minutes in 2022-23.
“Patients in Surrey are likely to receive the procedure in less than 90 minutes, while those in Bedford, Luton, and Milton Keynes must wait around four hours” despite them being just 50 miles apart.”
It will also warn of widespread variations in stroke care.
A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “It’s alarming that the progress made on heart disease and stroke is now in decline. It points to a failure to help people stay healthy, and a failure of the NHS to be there for us when we need it.
“This government is acting to cut waiting times and reform the NHS, so it catches illness earlier, which is better for patients and less expensive for our health service.”
The report will also point to evidence that where bold action has been taken, health has improved. It will say this is notably the case for smoking.
Labour brought in a ban on smoking in public places in 2007 and the Government is currently proposing to phase out legal sales of cigarettes by age.
Lord Darzi’s review was commissioned by Mr Streeting to uncover the full extent of the challenges facing the NHS to provide a full and frank assessment of the issues it has inherited.
The Government said the findings will help provide the basis for a 10-year plan for the NHS and build a health service that is fit for the future.
However, there were warnings on Sunday that Labour’s pledge to deliver 40,000 extra weekly NHS appointments to reduce waiting times will not be enough to meet targets.
In its general election manifesto, the party set a target of having 92 per cent of patients begin routine hospital treatment within 18 weeks of referral by the end of this parliament.
This would be achieved by having neighbouring hospitals share waiting lists, supplying additional capacity from the independent sector, and incentivising NHS staff to work extra evenings and weekends.
But a new report by the NHS Confederation and healthcare consultancy Carnall Farrar has found the number of appointments promised - equivalent to two million a year - would only meet 15 per cent of the target if care continues to be delivered in the same way.
The NHS would, in fact, need to provide 33.6 million outpatient appointments by 2028/29 to bring waiting lists back to meeting the 18-week level, according to the report.
Victoria Atkins, the shadow health secretary said she was concerned that the Government would use the findings of the report to justify tax rises.
She said: “This report should be about what the state of the NHS is and providing solutions and what worries me is that Labour is using this report as cover for the tax rises they plan to raise on us all at the Budget in October.”
Lord Darzi is a pioneering surgeon who won the nickname “Robo Doc” for spearheading the use of keyhole surgery and robotics in operating theatres. Under the last Labour government, he recommended the rollout of polyclinics – major sites bringing together GPs with a wider range of services from 8am until 8pm.
The peer has also said that hospitals should provide far more care seven days a week, noting: “British Airways does not leave its planes on the tarmac over the weekend.”
Currently, half of NHS hospitals close their operating theatres at weekends, with the number of elective operations, such as hip replacements, falling by 80 per cent on Saturdays and Sundays.