NHS funding has increased from £34.7 billion in 1997/98 to a planned £90.7 billion in 2007/2008.
The money spent by the Department of Health on health services in the UK per head has risen from £815.30 in 2001-2002 to a planned £1,357.20 in 2007-08.
In 2006/07 the NHS ended the financial year with a net surplus of £515million. 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: 52per 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.
74 Mental Health Trusts (including 10 Foundation Trusts and 16 PCTs providing MH services)
13 Ambulance Trusts
10 Strategic Health Authorities
10 Care Trusts (including 1 PCT) - 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
The NHS currently employs 126,000 doctors, 398,000 nursing staff, and 36,751 managers.
The number of doctors employed by the NHS has increased by an annual average of 3.9 per cent since 1997.
There were almost 40,000 more doctors employed in the NHS in 2006 compared to 1996.
There were 82,500 more NHS nurses in 2006 compared to ten years earlier.
3,950 more practice nurses were employed by GPs in 2006 than in 2001.
84 per cent of NHS staff are directly involved in patient care.
Since 2000 the number of frontline staff within the NHS has risen by 20 per cent. This rise includes an increase in doctors of 29 per cent; a rise in the number of nurses of 19 per cent; and 10 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 2.7 per cent of the 1.3 million staff employed by the NHS in 2006
Between 1996 and 2006 the NHS has recruited 15,400 additional managers, an average annual increase of 5.6 per cent. In the same period more than 122,000 additional doctors and nurses have been recruited.
In 2004 the management costs of the NHS had fallen from 5 pence in the pound in 2000 to 4 pence.
While the NHS spends 3.9 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.
NHS chief executives' counterparts in the private sector are paid, on average, £424,000 - over four 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 7.2 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.
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.
In the 2006 Healthcare Commission inpatient satisfaction survey 92 per cent of the 80,000 respondents rated the care that they received as excellent (41 per cent), very good (36 per cent) or good (15 per cent).
78 per cent felt that they were always treated with dignity and respect while using inpatient services.
93 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.
92 per cent of people agreed that their GP always treated them with dignity and respect.
Almost 98 per cent of patients are seen and treated within four hours in A&E.
74.6 per cent of category A ambulance calls were responded to within eight minutes in 2006-07 as against a Government target of 75 per cent. The number of 999 calls has almost doubled in the past decade to 6.3 million.
In 2005/06 the average length of stay in hospital decreased to 6.6 days, compared to 7.1 days the previous year.
Average waiting times for inpatient admission has fallen from 13.2 weeks in March 1997 to 6.9 weeks by October 2006.
The number of people waiting longer than 6 months for treatment as a hospital inpatient fell from 393,037 in March 2000 to 144 in April 2006 .
The NHS deals with over 1 million patients every 36 hours.
In 2005/06 there were 757,000 more elective (planned) admissions than 1999/00.
In the last ten years the number of emergency incidents attended by ambulance services has increased by 70 per cent, from 2.99 million to 5.07 million.
There were 117,000 more cataract operations carried out in the NHS in 2005/06 compared to 1998/99.
In 2005/06 the number of heart operations undertaken within the NHS had risen from 41,000 in 1999 to 76,500.
Since 1997, 54 new hospital building projects with a value of £29.7 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.
Life expectancy for men: 76.9 years. Life expectancy for women: 81.2 years
The UK population is projected to increase from an estimated 59.8 million in 2004, to 67 million in 2031. This is equivalent to an average annual growth rate of 0.42 per cent, or 12 per cent over the 27 years. Based on these estimates, the population will exceed 65 million in 2023.
By 2011 the number of people aged 65 and over is predicted to reach 10,489,000, growing to 15,340,000 by 2031.
There are an estimated 2.35 million people with diabetes in England and this is predicted to grow to more than 2.5 million by 2010.
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 23.1 per cent in 2005, and from 16.4 per cent to 24.8 per cent for women over the same timescale.
In 2002 the direct cost of treating obesity was estimated at between £46-48 million. Between £945 million and £1,075 million was spent on treating the consequences of obesity.