7:30am Tuesday 9th September 2008
By Thom Airs
We no longer have a national health service, according to one Oxfordshire cancer drug campaigner, following a new report highlighting the stark reality of the UK's healthcare postcode lottery.
Figures published yesterday show the amount per person each of the country's Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) spends on treating three separate conditions - cancers and tumours, mental health and circulatory problems including heart disease.
The report indicates Oxfordshire PCT spends £82 per head on cancers and tumours, meaning it is 68th out of 151 trusts in England.
But it also shows the PCT in Knowsley, in Merseyside, spends £118 per patient, while in Ealing, West London, the amount is a mere £47.
Kidney cancer patient Clive Stone, from Freeland near Witney, said the discrepancies from region to region needed to be addressed.
The 60-year-old campaigner has repeatedly called for live-prolonging drugs to be made available nationally.
He said: "We no longer have a national health service. We all pay the same rate of tax and National Insurance contributions wherever we live in the country, yet the level of spending is so different at local level.
"People have said to me that they cannot get (cancer drug) Sutent because they live a mile down the road from a PCT boundary, the other side of which they would be able to get it.
"In the time it takes to sort this out more people will die unnecessarily and it is important that people realise cancer waits for no man."
The new figures, published by health think tank the King's Fund, were compiled using Department of Health data from 2004 to 2007.
Professor John Appleby, one of the report's authors, said: "Even when local need and other legitimate reasons for variations in spending are taken into account, PCTs continue to spend varying amounts on cancer, coronary heart disease, mental health and a range of other diseases.
"We must be careful in drawing firm conclusions, from the data, but it does raise questions about the consistency of the decisions PCTs make about how much they spend on different diseases."
The King's Fund's chief executive, Niall Dickson, said: "It does not mean that any one PCT's spending is necessarily wrong, but it does suggest that as well as unexplained variations in clinical practice, there are unexplained spending variations - some of these are almost certainly not justified."
A Department of Health spokesman said: "It would be impractical as well as undesirable for every single spending decision by local health managers to be dictated by Whitehall.
"Local NHS organisations are answerable to their local population."
Oxfordshire PCT declined to comment.
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