Key Statistics on the NHS 

NHS funding

• NHS net expenditure has increased from £40.201 billion in 1999/2000 to a forecast outturn of £102.985bn in 2010/11 The planned expenditure for 2011/12 is £105.9bn.
• The money spent per capita on NHS service in England has risen from £1,287 in 2003/04 to £1,979 in 2010/11.
• The NHS surplus for the 2009/10 financial year (including FTs) was £1.897bn.  

NHS organisations     

In the NHS there are currently:

• 151 primary care trusts (PCTs) with 51 clusters operating integrated management and board structures
• 257 GP pathfinder consortia
• 166 acute trusts (including 94 foundation trusts)
• 58 mental health trusts (including 41 foundation trusts) 
• 36 community trusts (including 18 aspirant foundation trusts and 18 social enterprises)
• 11 ambulance trusts (including 2 foundation trusts)
• 10 strategic health authorities
• c.10,500 GP practices in the UK
• 2312 hospitals in the UK  

NHS staff

• In 2010 the NHS employed 141,326 doctors, 410,615 qualified nursing staff, and 41,962 managers.
• The number of doctors employed by the NHS has increased by an annual average of 3.8 per cent since 2000.
• There were more than 43,890 additional doctors employed in the NHS in 2010 compared to 2000.
• There were 74,663 more NHS nurses in 2010 compared to ten years earlier.
• 2,125 more practice nurses were employed by GPs in 2010 than ten years earlier.
• 50.4 per cent of NHS employees are professionally qualified clinical staff.
• Since 2000 the number of professionally qualified clinical staff within the NHS has risen by 30.26 per cent. This rise includes an increase in doctors of 45 per cent; a rise in the number of nurses of 22 per cent; and 25 per cent more ambulance staff.
• Medical school intake rose from 3,749 in 1997/98 to 6,451 in 2006/07 - a rise of 74.5 per cent.  

Management

• Managers and senior managers accounted for 2.9 per cent of the 1.4 million staff employed by the NHS in 2010.
• Between 2000 and 2010 the NHS recruited 16,706 additional managers, an average annual increase of 5.2 per cent. In the same period more than 118,500 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.

International comparisons

• In comparison with the healthcare systems of six other countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand and USA) the NHS was found to the second most impressive overall by the Commonwealth Fund in 2010.
• The NHS was rated as the best system in terms of efficiency, effective care and cost-related problems. It was also ranked second for equity and safe care.
• However in the categories of long healthy and productive lives (6th) and patient-centred care (7th) the NHS fared less well. 

Quality of patient care

• In the 2010 Care Quality Commission inpatient satisfaction survey 92 per cent of the c66,000 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.
• 66 per cent said that their room or ward was 'very clean.'
• In the 2009 Care Quality Commission outpatient survey 94 per cent of people using outpatient services reported their care as being excellent (40 per cent), very good (41 per cent) or good (14 per cent).
• 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.  
• 74.3 per cent of category A ambulance calls were responded to within eight minutes in 2009/10. 
• 90.8 per cent of people with admitted pathways were treated within 18 weeks of referral in May 2011, compared to 92.9 per cent a year earlier. The median waiting time was 8.4 weeks.
• 97.7 per cent of people with non-admitted pathways were treated within 18 weeks of referral in May 2011, compared to 98.2 per cent a year earlier. The median waiting time was 4.4 weeks. 

NHS activity

• The NHS deals with over 1 million patients every 36 hours.
• In 2009/10 there were 50 per cent more operations completed by the NHS compared to a decade earlier, with an increase from 6.494m to 9.748m.
• In the last ten years the number of emergency incidents attended by ambulance services has almost doubled to 7.87m.
• There were 138,640 more cataract operations carried out in the NHS in England in 2009/10 compared to 1999/2000.
• Between 1999/00 and 2009/10 the number of heart operations performed by the NHS almost doubled from 43,163 to 85,432. 

Health and population

• Life expectancy for UK men: 77.7 years. Life expectancy for UK women: 81.9 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 was predicted to reach 10,494,000, growing to 15,778,000 by 2031.
• There were an estimated 2.8 million people with diabetes in the UK in 2010, which is double the number from 1996. This is predicted to reach 4 million by 2025. 
• In England the proportion of men classified as obese increased from 13.2 per cent in 1993 to 22.1 per cent in 2009, and from 16.4 per cent to 23.9 per cent for women over the same timescale. However both of the 2009 proportions are lower than the previous year.