Research doesn't show that the NHS became the top healthcare system "in the last 4 years"
Speaking on radio 4's Today programme this morning, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said:
"Last week the independent Commonwealth Fund based in Washington rated the NHS as the top healthcare system of 11 major countries, say that we've become the top healthcare system in the last four years."
It's true to say that research by the Commonwealth Fund ranks the UK as the number one healthcare system in its 2014 report. It did this by scoring each country according to 80 indicators drawn from a variety of sources.
Using the same methods, in 2010 it ranked the UK 2nd - meaning in the last four years the UK's ranking has gone up.
But that doesn't mean the NHS became the top system in that time period. For their 2014 report the researchers used the most recent available data they could find, but some of this went back to 2011. Similarly, the 2010 research used data from 2007.
So the rankings for 2014 and 2010 are the researcher's best approximation of the healthcare systems at the time of publication. But that doesn't mean they reflect the reality at those exact points in time; the change in ranking from 2010-2014 doesn't necessarily come from changes in the healthcare system in the same period.