16 November 2008

How do diabetics fare in the NHS?

Diabetes can lead to a lot of potentially very nasty complications. Keeping track of diabetics to make sure they get what they need to minimise complications is quite a challenge. So how do we do in the NHS compared with other countries? Some idea can be found in the bar chart below from the latest Commonwealth Fund survey.




On this measure we are not at all bad. But can you believe that in the NHS 75% of adults with a chronic condition reported a medical, medication or lab test error in the past two years and in the US and Canada it is even worse? And these were just the errors that occurred outside hospital.




Richard Branson might condemn these figures but perhaps the errors reported are more equivalent to an airline losing your bags or landing gear failure than a pilot forgetting to put the landing gear down.


1 comment:

No One said...

dont believe that graph

for a start consultant access is piss poor for diabetics in this country, especially if you have the nerve to move address and become one of the people with normal lifes the nhs is crap at providing care for

also pumps are routine in say belgium, while i understand entire counties such as say essex have less than a handful of pumps on the nhs and then the patients go to london for support

so as per my blog diabetic care in the nhs is sub 3rd fucking world as much of the rest of the nhs

as many pretty graphs as you like will not convince me otherwise cos i can see it up close and personal, and compare with other places in the world

http://notdrrant.blogspot.com/