Key Statistics on the NHS 

• NHS funding
• NHS organisations
• NHS staff
• Management
• International comparisons
• Quality of patient care
• NHS activity
• Health and population

NHS funding

• NHS net expenditure has increased from £34.7 billion in 1997/98 to £98.3 billion in 2009/2010. Planned net expenditure for 2010/11 is £102.3bn.
• The money spent per capita on NHS service in England has risen from £1,218 in 2003/04 to a planned £1,774 in 2008/09.
• The NHS surplus for the 2008/09 financial year (excluding FTs) was £2.007bn.
• In 2006/07 the NHS ended the financial year with a net surplus of £526million. Across the NHS the gross deficit was £917 million, which is down from £1.3 billion for 2005/06.
• Of the extra NHS funding in 2005/2006: 52 per cent was spent on higher pay costs; 17 per cent on extra drug costs; 7 per cent on capital costs and 13 per cent on more activity and improvements.
• Further analysis from the King's Fund for 2006/07 has estimated that 40 per cent of the additional funding was used for pay and a further 32% was consumed by higher prices and costs associated with NICE recommendations, clinical negligence and capital costs.

NHS organisations      

In the NHS there are:

• 168 acute trusts (including 88 foundation trusts)
• 152 primary care trusts (PCTs)
• 73 mental health trusts (including 37 foundation trusts and 14 PCTs providing mental health services)
• 12 ambulance trusts (including one PCT)
• 10 strategic health authorities
• 10 care trusts (including 2 PCTs and 3 mental health trusts) - care trusts work in both health and social care and are established when the NHS agrees to work in partnership with local authorities to provide services
• c.10,500 GP practices in the UK

NB: some trusts/PCTs are counted twice or more - for example, PCTs providing mental health services or ambulance services

NHS staff

• The NHS currently employs 133,662 doctors, 408,160 qualified nursing staff, and 39,913 managers.
• The number of doctors employed by the NHS has increased by an annual average of 3.8 per cent since 1998.
• There were more than 41,800 additional doctors employed in the NHS in 2008 compared to 1998
• There were 84,700 more NHS nurses in 2008 compared to ten years earlier.
• 2,200 more practice nurses were employed by GPs in 2008 than in 2001.
• 51 per cent of NHS employees are professionally qualified clinical staff.
• Since 2000 the number of frontline staff within the NHS has risen by almost 27 per cent. This rise includes an increase in doctors of 37 per cent; a rise in the number of nurses of 21 per cent; and 18 per cent more ambulance staff.
• Medical school intake rose from 3,749 in 1999/2000 to 6,326 in 2004/05 - a rise of 69 per cent.
• Between 1999/00 and 2005/06 the number of NHS commissions of pre-registration nurses training increased by 31 per cent.

• Managers and senior managers accounted for 2.9 per cent of the 1.3 million staff employed by the NHS in 2008
• Between 1998 and 2008 the NHS has recruited 17,220 additional managers, an average annual increase of 5.8 per cent. In the same period more than 126,000 additional doctors and nurses have been recruited.
• In 2008/09 the management costs of the NHS had fallen from 5.0 per cent in 1997/98 to 3.0 per cent.
• While the NHS spends 3 per cent of its budget on management costs, equivalent figures for hospitals in Canada and the USA are 10 per cent and 17 per cent respectively.
• NHS chief executives' counterparts in the private sector are paid, on average, £424,000 - around three times the average salary within the NHS.
• 32 per cent of NHS chief executives come from a clinical background and over 50 per cent of NHS managers have a clinical background.
• 59 per cent of managers and senior managers in the NHS are female and 10 per cent are from minority ethnic groups.

• In comparison with the healthcare systems of five other countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and USA) the NHS was found to the most impressive overall by the Commonwealth Fund in 2007.
• The NHS was rated as the best system in terms of quality of care, co-ordination of care, efficiency of care and equity. It was also ranked second behind the USA in relation to the provision of the right form of care and second behind Germany with regards to the provision of safe care.
• In the categories of patient-centred care and access, the NHS was placed fourth. In relation to the maintenance of healthy lives, the NHS ranked equal-fourth.

Quality of patient care

• In the 2008 Healthcare Commission inpatient satisfaction survey 92 per cent of the 72,000 respondents rated the care that they received as excellent (43 per cent), very good (35 per cent) or good (14 per cent).
• 79 per cent felt that they were always treated with dignity and respect while using inpatient services.
• 95 per cent said that their room or ward was 'very clean' or 'fairly clean.'
• In the 2005 Healthcare Commission outpatient survey 93 per cent of people using outpatient services reported their care as being excellent (37 per cent), very good (41 per cent) or good (16 per cent).
• Some 87 per cent of people agreed that they were treated with dignity and respect at all these times while visiting outpatient services.
• In the 2008 Healthcare Commission survey of local health services, 93 per cent of people agreed that their GP always treated them with dignity and respect.  
• 96.4 per cent of patients are seen and treated within four hours in A&E.
• 74.3 per cent of category A ambulance calls were responded to within eight minutes in 2008/09 as against a Government target of 75 per cent. This compares with 77.1 per cent in the previous year. 
• In 2007/08 the average length of stay in hospital decreased to 5.9 days, compared to 6.3 days the previous year.
• The median waiting times at the end of November 2009 in England were 2.8 weeks for outpatients and 4.2 weeks for inpatients.
• The number of people waiting longer than 6 months for treatment as a hospital inpatient fell from 275,460 in April 2000 to 16 by the end of November 2009.

NHS activity

• The NHS deals with over 1 million patients every 36 hours.
• In 2008/09 there were 1.667m more elective (planned) admissions than 1998/99.
• In the last ten years the number of emergency incidents attended by ambulance services has more than doubled to 7.48m.
• There were almost 143,000 more cataract operations carried out in the NHS in England in 2008/09 compared to 1998/99.
  In 2008/09 the number of heart operations undertaken within the NHS in England had more than doubled since 1998/99 from 40,999 to 85,070.
• Since 1997, 55 new hospital building projects with a value of £30 million or above have been completed. This is the largest ever hospital building programme.
• Between 2003/4 and 2005/6, visits to walk-in centres have increased by 59 per cent to more than 2.5 million, and the number of households receiving intensive homecare has risen by 12.7 per cent.

Health and population

• Life expectancy for men: 77.4 years. Life expectancy for women: 81.6 years
• The UK population is projected to increase from an estimated 61.4 million in 2008, to 71.6 million in 2033. Based on these estimates, the population will exceed 65 million in 2018.
• By 2011 the number of people aged 65 and over is predicted to reach 10,494,000, growing to 15,778,000 by 2031.
• There are an estimated 2.6 million people with diabetes in the UK and this is predicted to reach 4 million by 2025. 
• Type 1 diabetes in children is rising at a rate of 3 per cent a year.
• In England the proportion of men classified as obese increased from 13.2 per cent in 1993 to 23.6 per cent in 2007, and from 16.4 per cent to 24.4 per cent for women over the same timescale.
• In 2002 the direct cost of treating obesity was estimated at between £46-49 million. Between £945 million and £1,075 million was spent on treating the consequences of obesity.