NHS public satisfaction – has Ed Miliband got the highs and lows right?
“Two facts stand out beyond all others:
The verdict of the public: at a time when people talk about cynicism in our public life, the NHS is now benefiting from the highest satisfaction ratings it has ever achieved, 72 per cent.
Against the lowest ever in the 1990s.” Ed Miliband, 5th of April, 2011.
The Guardian caused a stir a few weeks ago by claiming that the Department for Health was burying 'good news' on recent public satisfaction levels in the NHS by failing to publish survey results that it had commissioned on the subject.
Full Fact covered this story, with the result that the Department for Health eventually published the more recent data on their website, whilst pointing out that it had already been in the public domain – albeit in a corner of the Parliamentary website so obscure that even the Health Secretary had been unaware of it.
Opponents of NHS reform have picked up on the findings of record public satisfaction in the NHS, arguing that these demonstrate that complete re-organisation of the NHS is not needed.
In a speech to the RSA earlier this week addressing the future of the NHS, Ed Miliband again pointed to the figures on record public satisfaction, comparing them to data from the 1990s.
The data on public satisfaction can be found on the Department for Health website, and shows record levels of public satisfaction in the NHS over the last few years. The peak was reached in March 2009, when satisfaction levels were at 74 per cent; this is actually slightly higher than the 72 per cent cited by Ed Miliband, which corresponds with the March 2010 figure.
This data is compiled by Ipsos MORI for the Department of Health, however the bi-annual surveys only go back to 2000, meaning it can't be compared to the 1990s, which is the point of comparison for Mr Miliband.
Earlier continuous data on satisfaction levels is produced by the British Social Attitudes Survey. The graph below, from the National Centre for Social Research, shows data going back to 1983 when the survey was first compiled.
It confirms that public satisfaction levels in the NHS reached their lowest point in 1997.
Conclusion
Ed Miliband is not wrong to claim that the current level of satisfaction with the NHS is at its highest ever, with its lowest ebb being experienced in the 1990s.
However, this analysis can only be supported with reference to the British Social Attitudes Survey. He should not be making a direct comparison of data from two different surveys, which he seems to have done by referencing the 72 per cent figure found in Ipsos MORI's survey.
It is not statistically sound to make a direct comparison between these two different satisfaction surveys, given the associated problems of merging data based on the two bodies' differing methodology.
The need for caution in comparing these polls is demonstrated in the different findings of the two surveys in 2009. Ipsos MORI reported satisfaction levels of 74 per cent while the British Social Attitudes Survey reported 64 per cent, a difference of 10 per cent.
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