Government 'lagging' on heart patient reforms

The Government has admitted it is struggling to meet its own targets for treating and monitoring patients with heart problems.

Hazel Blears, a Health minister, has conceded that progress towards achieving several milestones for combating heart failure has been "patchy".

However, in a written Commons answer, Ms Blears sidestepped direct challenges that she give details relating to progress towards targets. But she did admit that the "heart failure element is lagging behind" in the development of national registers of coronary patients in general.

Two years ago, as a part of its much-trumpeted National Service Framework (NSF) for tackling coronary heart disease (CHD), the Government published a series of detailed targets. They requested that all primary care teams develop plans for assessing, treating, and carrying out follow-up checks on heart failure patients by April this year. Hospitals were also told to draw up programmes for treating and rehabilitating patients by the same date.

Primary care units were also instructed to compile registers of patients' medical records by April last year. They were told to aim for the goal of "complete and correct packages of audited, effective interventions to all people discharged with a diagnosis of heart failure, demonstrated by clinical audit data no more than 12 months old".

Of the April 2002 targets for detailed treatment plans, Ms Blears said they were being drawn up both in primary care and hospital settings. But she added: "Progress could be patchy as implementation of the NSF for [coronary heart disease]to date has focused on the immediate priorities." She listed those priorities as including helping heart patients to give up smoking, improving ambulance response times and setting up Rapid Access Chest Pain clinics across the country.

Ms Blears said: "With the focus on the immediate priorities, progress in the management of heart failure has not been as rapid as that in other areas. However, heart failure will be one of our key priorities during the middle phase of the overall 10-year NSF implementation programme. We are currently developing more detailed plans for improving services."

Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, who obtained the written answer, said: "Patients are suffering because of ministers' failure to deliver on their own targets. When over one in 10 of all deaths are linked to heart failure, this is a matter of urgency. It should be higher up the Government's list of priorities."

The numbers of cases of heart failure, whose symptoms include breathing difficulties and low energy levels, are rising along with those of the ageing population and improved survival rates from heart attacks.

The British Heart Foundation has estimated there are nearly 900,000 heart failure patients in this country, with 63,000 new cases diagnosed annually, costing the National Health Service about £625m a year. Their survival rate is judged to be worse that than of breast cancer sufferers, with 38 per cent dying within a year of diagnosis. The condition, defined as the heart becoming less efficient at pumping blood, usually occurs after a heart attack.