Effectiveness
There have been some important areas of good practice and improvement in relation to the effectiveness of care and services provided in England and Wales during 2006/2007.
Healthcare Standards
Our assessments showed an improvement in the NHS over the past year.
Standards in the independent sector have also improved considerably over the year, but there is still improvement needed in the independent mental heath sector.
Heart conditions
More people with a suspected heart attack are gaining access to clot busting drugs and primary angioplasty to unblock their arteries. The prescription of heart failure prevention medication is exceeding targets. The proportion of patients being managed under the care of a cardiologist is improving. Survival rates for bypass operations are higher than expected and for aortic valve operations, are within the expected range.
Cancer services
Despite improvements in access to cancer services, audits sponsored by the Healthcare Commission show that there is still wide variation is the level of care offered to patients. For example, multidisciplinary teams aren't treating some yet, and this may affect the outcome.
Maternity services
We published our review of maternity services in England publishes in July 2008.
In Wales maternity services were generally delivered in a safe and effective way, however more women could benefit by being cared for within the clinical pathway for normal labour. Some trusts had shortfalls in consultant obstetrician cover and that trusts needed to strengthen the implementation of their policies for when there was an increase in activity or a reduction in staffing levels.
Our recommendations
We recommend that healthcare providers in both the independent sector and NHS do more to assess the quality of their services against other similar organisations through benchmarking and audit.
Nationally, there needs to be agreement on which information is important, and information should be published on a national comparative basis.
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