Long-awaited praise for the NHS?

The NHS has been praised for meeting their targets in the quest to cut hospital waiting times down to 18 weeks.

Statistics from August show that 90 percent of patients who required admission to hospital and 95 percent of patients not needing admission, started treatment within 18 weeks of referral from their GP.

The Department of Health also met targets in cutting down the cases of the hospital bug Clostridium difficile in the last three months, with an 18% drop.

But as per usual not everything is just what the doctor ordered, the BBC note that even though the NHS average is on par with the targets, just under half of the hospitals are meeting it.

The Nurse2Nurse blog also puts a downer on the NHS, saying that although the NHS has improved by “leaps and bounds” over the past few years, 60% of hospitals are still not dealing with superbug infections effectively, and 69% of GPs do not provide patients with the easy access to appointments.

It seems to me that the NHS are doing whatever they can to get back in the Ministers’ and the public’s good books. However, as previously posted, whenever the NHS do something well, we can always find other negative points to dwell upon.