Public’s satisfaction with NHS fell by 12% in 2011

Last year saw the largest dip in satisfaction with the NHS since public attitudes on performance of the service first began being assessed by the British Social Attitudes Survey almost 30 years ago.

The figures, published on 12 June by the King’s Fund, which sponsors the health questions in the wide ranging survey since the Department of Health scrapped funding for them last year,1 show that public satisfaction “with the way in which the NHS runs nowadays” fell from a peak of 70% in 2010 to 58% in 2011.⇓ This drop of 12 percentage points is the largest since the survey began in 1983 and follows almost a decade in which satisfaction with the NHS crept up steadily.2

However, despite the fall, current public satisfaction with the NHS is still …