'NHS is improving' reports health watchdog

Patient care in the health service in England and Wales is improving according to a new report from health watchdog the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI).

The report, 'Getting Better?', finds that national standards have led to better care and investment has created an improved environment for patients.

CHI, which was set up three years ago as an independent inspection body for the NHS, reviewed over 250 NHS organisations in compiling the report.

CHI says that staff in the NHS are "almost universally committed, caring people striving under pressure to do their best for those that use the service". Overall, the CHI says that "the bottom line is that the NHS as a whole is getting better".

However, the report says that patients in some parts of the NHS are not yet benefiting from all of the improvements. The best standards of care need to be adopted more widely, and information for patients and service users needs to be more accessible.

The report found that improvement in NHS services is "not yet affecting frontline delivery of services on a large enough scale to impact on most members of the public". The CHI also warned that some parts of the NHS "may be getting worse".

The report adds: "It (health care) is also patchy and inconsistent and sometimes made up of isolated examples of very good practice that are delivering considerably improved care, but which are not being taken up across the NHS, or even in other departments in the same organisation."

The CHI highlighted its concerns over the standards for mental health care, lack of progress on controlling infections passed on in hospital and the numbers of men and women who still have to share wards.

The CHI added: "We are critical of the management of care for individuals, particularly across organization and sector boundaries, but we recognize that this is partly made more difficult by the increasing number of organisations that may be involved in an individual’s care."

Commenting on the report, CHI Chairman, Dame Deirdre Hine, said: "We do not reach a conclusion that everything is rosy in the NHS, but nor do we conclude that it is generally failing.

"We have found that NHS services have improved, but sometimes the improvements have not been big enough for the public to take notice. Where big improvements are making a real difference for patients, they are often limited to particular conditions or localities.

"To sustain the improvement so that it is apparent to everyone, the efforts being made across the service must continue. This will ensure that new resources have maximum positive impact on patient care. If everywhere can become as good as the best in the NHS, our health service will be the envy of the world."

(GMcG)