Improving NHS 'gripped by optimism', say advisers

NHS staff are gripped by an outbreak of optimism after decades of gloom for the service, a panel of government advisers said yesterday.

The huge investment in the health service, amounting to more than £5bn in the past year alone, is delivering "significant and sustained improvement", according to the NHS Modernisation Board.

Presenting their third annual report at a meeting with Tony Blair yesterday, the 37 members of the board, who include senior NHS staff, health charities and medical organisations, said the health service was being transformed. But they added that not everyone was receiving "the kind of treatment we would want for our families and ourselves".

The report said: "The improvements we have witnessed ... [are] not enough. The next step we want to see will be a further shift in the provision of services outside hospitals so patients and the public are able to access care more conveniently and locally."

Mr Blair said "real change" was occurring in the health service, but there was "a huge amount still to do".

The meeting heard from Melissa Thoms, 11, from Stockport, who said her life had been transformed by an insulin pump imported by the NHS from America. "I think the NHS is really good," she said.