More than 60 per cent of people in the UK are “very or quite happy” with the NHS, meaning patient satisfaction is at an all-time high, an expert has claimed.
Professor John Appleby also said that eight out of ten people were satisfied with their GP while the public’s view of accident and emergency and outpatient services in hospitals has improved in the past decade due to spending tripling under the previous Labour government.
Only 55 per cent of people quizzed in the first British Social Attitudes survey in 1983 were very or quite satisfied with the NHS and, by 1997, when Labour took power, it had dropped to 35 per cent. The most recent survey, however, showed it had risen to 64 per cent.
Prof Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund think tank, wrote in a paper published by the British Medical Journal: “The NHS must have been doing something right to earn this extra satisfaction - something even Conservative supporters have noticed, and something probably not [unrelated] to the large rise in funding since 2000.
“Future BSA surveys will reveal how satisfied the public remain as funding for the NHS is squeezed and the government’s proposed reforms take shape on the ground.”
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