The NHS is ‘neither a leader nor a laggard’ when compared to health care systems of similar countries, though on some critical measures of resources and performance including key health outcomes and staff numbers the UK is falling well below average, according to a report from the King’s Fund.
Its analysis of health care systems in 19 different countries finds that the NHS offers people good protection from the potentially catastrophic costs of ill health and is run relatively efficiently, it underperforms significantly on many key health care outcomes and has fewer clinical staff than most international health systems.