Report / Royal Commission on the National Health Service.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the National Health Service.
Date:
[1979]
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Report / Royal Commission on the National Health Service. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    28/510 (page 14)
    said that if they had to go back into hospital they would definitely not want to go into the same hospital again. 3.5 We complemented the OPCS primary care survey with a study of services for children and old people in two markedly different communities in London and Cumbria’, and we were also able to use the results of a study of access to primary health care in the Western Isles’. These surveys showed that though there were criticisms of particular aspects of primary care, patients were generally satisfied with the service they received. Simpson’s study concluded that: “On the whole, while always capable of improvement, the NHS did provide an accessible primary care service which was generally appreciated by its users.’” Access to services 3.6 One of the objectives we referred to in Chapter 2 was equality of access to health services. It is a mark of a successful health service that it 1s available equally to all potential users. We concern ourselves here with geographical and social equality of access. We deal with the question of priorities between particular patient groups in the NHS in Chapter 6. Geographical equality 3.7 I[t is not difficult to show that some parts of the UK are better served than others in terms of expenditure on health services and numbers of staff. Tables 3.1 and 3.2 give some crude comparisons. The figures make no allowance for differences in demand or need for health services, nor for differences in the cost of delivering health care. The age patterns of populations differ; a relatively elderly population will need fewer maternity services but may make heavier demands on acute and community health services. The stock of hospital buildings will be of better quality in some places than in others. Teaching and research responsibilities vary. 3.8 Commonly used measures of health are infant mortality rates, perinatal mortality rates and standardised mortality ratios.* Table 3.3 shows that there are geographical variations in these measures of health as well as in health service resources. Tables 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 show that the relationship between health service resources and the health of the population served, as measured by mortality rates, is far from simple and that judgments about the effectiveness and efficiency of health services must make allowance for other influences on health. Nevertheless, it is clear that striking differences in ‘Simpson, Robin. Access to Primary Care, Royal Commission on the NHS, Research Paper Number 6, London, HMSO, 1979. *Scottish Consumer Council, [sland Health Care, Institute of Medical Sociology Occasional Paper Number 3, Aberdeen, 1978. *Simpson, Robin. Op cit, paragraph 7.49. ‘See footnote 1 to Table 3.3.