Shockingly long waiting times and widespread staff shortages have led to the public losing faith in the NHS, a damning report reveals. Satisfaction in our health system has now dropped to the lowest level ever recorded thanks to the massive backlog in treatment caused by the pandemic.
Although the public still overwhelmingly support the NHS’s founding principles, including care free at the point of use, just 29 percent said they were now satisfied with it in the British Social Attitudes survey.
The crisis in the NHS means 7.2m people were waiting for treatment in January with 3 million waiting over 18 weeks.
The battle to try and reduce the backlog has been hampered by low staffing levels with 137,000 unfilled posts across the NHS and industrial action by nurses and junior doctors.
The latest findings for 2022 have been published today by think tanks The Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund.
Jessica Morris, report author and fellow at the Nuffield Trust, said: “The fact we have now recorded the lowest level of satisfaction with the NHS in the 40-year history of this gold standard survey is a warning siren.
“The Prime Minister has made recovering the NHS one of his central promises going into the next general election, but these results show what an enormous task this will be.
“It is clear that the level of unhappiness amongst the British public over the way the NHS is running is going to take many years to recover.”
Fellow author Dan Wellings, a senior fellow at The King’s Fund, said the results should ring “loud, continuous alarm bells in the corridors of power”.
He added: “It is easy to become desensitised to the relentless flow of bad news about struggling health services, but we cannot underestimate the significance of today’s unprecedented results.
“In 2010, satisfaction with the NHS stood at a record high of 70 percent. Yet, satisfaction has now plummeted to its lowest ever level, at just 29 percent.
“People are struggling to get the care they need, particularly in an emergency, which is born out in the extraordinary spike in dissatisfaction with A&E services.”
He added: “Satisfaction ebbs and flows, but the belief in the institution is absolutely rock solid.
“It’s still the thing that makes us proudest to be British but these results are very clear – it’s not working for large numbers of people right now.”
The top three reasons for dissatisfaction with the NHS were long waits for GP and hospital appointments (69%), staff shortages (55%) and lack of Government funding for the health service (50%).
The survey’s 29 percent satisfaction figure is the worst figure in the survey’s 40-year history and a huge drop from 2010, when 70 percent were satisfied.
It was also the first time that the majority of those polled said they were unhappy with the care available.
Some 51 percent said they were dissatisfied overall – double the figure in 2020 – while the rest were neutral or uncertain.
The British Social Attitudes survey has tracked public opinion consistently since 1983.
Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of GPs said: “General practice is the bedrock of the NHS but there are simply not enough GPs or other members of practice staff to deliver the care and services we are trained for – and the impact of this on patients is reflected in today’s report.”
When it came to social care, just 14 percent of people were satisfied and 57 percent dissatisfied.
The survey asked 3,362 people in England, Wales and Scotland for their opinions on health and social care.
A subset of 1,187 also shared their thoughts on individual services. Emergency care saw the biggest rise in people saying they were unhappy.
Some 40 percent said they were dissatisfied with A&E services, while just 30 percent were satisfied and the rest neutral or uncertain.
Only 39 percent of people were satisfied with GP services and 27 percent with dentistry.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the results should be “a red flag to the government”.
He added: “The fact that public satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest in 40 years should not be seen as a judgement of the efforts of frontline staff to recover services in the wake of the pandemic but rather, a sign that the NHS is not being given what it needs to fully deliver for its local communities.”
“The NHS is taking significant steps to further improve patient experience, including our recently launched blueprint to recover urgent and emergency care alongside continuing to slash the long waits for elective treatment which inevitably built up during the pandemic, and we are working on new plans to boost primary care for patients as well as publishing a long-term workforce strategy shortly.”
A Department of Health & Social Care spokesperson said: “We are hugely grateful to NHS and social care staff for their incredible work including during the pandemic and the progress they have made to tackle the resulting backlog.
“Cutting waiting lists is one of the Prime Minister’s five priorities and so far, we have virtually eliminated waits of over two years for treatment and latest figures show the number of patients waiting over 18 months has reduced by 80 percent from the peak.”
