Britain's National Health Service remains a "mediocre" provider of healthcare, performing much less well than almost all of the UK's peers in western Europe, according to a European survey.
The index of European health services, issued yesterday in Brussels by Health Consumer Powerhouse, found Britain had slid further down the European league table over the past year despite the investment in the NHS under New Labour. Of 29 countries assessed, the EU's 27 plus Norway and Switzerland, Britain came 17th.
Apart from Italy, all the countries ranked worse than Britain were much poorer, mainly from eastern Europe. Apart from Italy and Portugal, all the countries of western Europe and Scandinavia scored much higher than Britain. The same survey last year put Britain 15th.
"Patients in the UK have the right to expect more. Despite substantial funding increases, the UK still is a mediocre overall performer," said Anje Björnberg, director of Health Consumer Powerhouse.
Austria came top of the survey, followed by The Netherlands and France. New and poorer EU member states such as Estonia, the Czech Republic and Cyprus were ranked higher than Britain.
The analysis criticised Britain for long waiting times, the regional variations in supply of healthcare, the low rates of five-year cancer survival, and the scale of MRSA infection in NHS hospitals.
The survey looked at five areas of healthcare - waiting times for common treatments, results of treatment, access to medicines, patients' rights and information, and "generosity of the system". Britain scored well on patients' rights, but poorly everywhere else.
Britain and Germany represent the two fundamental systems of public healthcare in Europe, with the British "Beveridge" system unifying funding and provision, while the German "Bismarck" system is based around a plethora of competing insurance organisations independent of health service suppliers. The survey found that the German model is delivering better results.
"It is very hard to avoid noticing that the top five countries all have dedicated Bismarckian healthcare systems," the report said. "While not at all arguing that the Bismarck-type healthcare systems are in every way superior, it seems that for total customer value, the Bismarck model runs rings around Beveridge."
1 Austria
2 Netherlands
3 France
4 Switzerland
5 Germany
6 Sweden
7 Norway
8 Finland
9 Denmark
10 Belgium
11 Luxembourg
12 Estonia
13 Cyprus
14 Spain
15 Czech Republic
16 Ireland
17 UK
18 Italy
19 Portugal
20 Slovenia
21 Greece
22 Malta
23 Slovakia
24 Hungary
25 Romania
26 Lithuania
27 Poland
28 Bulgaria
29 Latvia
Source: Health Consumer Powerhouse