Public satisfaction with the NHS rises for first time since 2019 | NHS

Public satisfaction with the NHS has increased for the first time since 2019, but people remain deeply frustrated by stubbornly long waits to receive GP, emergency or hospital care.

The proportion of British voters satisfied with the way the NHS works has risen from a record high of 21% last year to 26%. At the same time, dissatisfaction with health services fell by 8% – the biggest drop since 1998 – although it remains high at 51%.

Wes Streeting hailed the results as proof that the NHS, which he said was “broken” when Labor came to power in July 2024, was now “on the road to recovery”.

The health secretary will cite them as evidence of progress in a speech Wednesday in which he will outline plans to improve care at five underperforming health centers.

Bosses of these organizations face being sacked and replaced by veterans, while failing trusts could be merged with successful ones, under a new “intensive NHS recovery programme” starting next month.

Figures on public satisfaction with the NHS have been revealed in the latest annual UK Social Attitudes Survey. Health experts warned that the “rebound” in approvals did not necessarily mark “a watershed” in the government’s determination to revive the service’s flagging fortunes.

Health think tanks the King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust, which analyzed the BSA data, said the findings represented “green shoots” of the recovery and would bring Streeting “relief and joy”. One said they showed the NHS was in the early stages of a recovery like the one it experienced under Tony Blair’s rule.

But they also warned that the survey of 3,400 people in England, Scotland and Wales found only “fragile improvements” in NHS performance 21 months after Labor came to power and that the public remained “very, very unhappy”.

The results show that:

• Only 22% are satisfied with medical and dental care.

• GP services and hospital care perform better, but only 36% and 37% are satisfied.

• Only 50% are satisfied with the quality of care provided by the NHS and only 16% think it will improve over the next five years.

• Satisfaction with social assistance is only 14%.

Delays in access to care continue to cause public discontent. Most people are dissatisfied with the time it takes to go to the emergency room (66%), receive hospital care (63%) and get an appointment with a GP (58%). Only 14% are satisfied with emergency room waiting times.

Mark Dayan, head of public affairs at the Nuffield Trust, said: “These are still figures that would have been thought to be catastrophic in the 2010s. They are even worse than they were even in the 1990s, a period when the public were widely perceived to be very unhappy with the NHS. »

The rise in satisfaction “is just a glimmer on the horizon, but the public mood remains bleak,” he added.

The government’s main commitment to the NHS is to get 92% of people on the waiting list back to being seen within 18 weeks by 2029. However, the public’s top two priorities for the NHS are different: quicker access to see a GP and get treatment in the emergency department, according to the BSA survey.

Dan Wellings, senior fellow at the King’s Fund, said: “Frustration with waiting times remains deep-seated, and many people still feel that accessing NHS care is difficult. Either it’s too difficult to get through the front door, or they find themselves in a queue that barely moves.”

Streeting said: “When this government came to power, I said that although the NHS was broken, it had not been beaten. Patients are starting to feel the change and the NHS is showing that things can improve.

“The biggest drop in discontent since 1998 is no accident. It is thanks to the government’s hard-won investments and modernization, which are now showing results.”

The backlog in hospital care is decreasing, more patients are being seen in emergency rooms within four hours and ambulance response times to 999 calls are improving, he said.

“The NHS is on the road to recovery, but there is still a long way to go. My foot is on the accelerator and I won’t stop until the job is done,” he added.

The five struggling NHS trusts where improvement measures will be targeted are North Cumbria Integrated Care Trust, Mid and South Essex Trust, Hull University Hospitals Trust, North Lincolnshire and Goole Trust and East Kent Hospitals Trust.