Cameron vows to ditch NHS targets

4:38pm Tuesday 24th June 2008

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Forcing hospitals to compete for patients by publishing data such as cancer survival rates could save 100,000 lives a year, David Cameron said.

The Conservative leader said scrapping NHS targets based on processes not results could form a key part of Tory health reforms.

And he said a Conservative government would aim to give patients in Britain among the best chances in Europe of surviving the most common conditions.

Proposals for a patient "information revolution" were contained in a policy consultation paper published by the party.

Speaking at the launch, Mr Cameron told an audience of health professionals at the Royal College of Surgeons in London that he wanted them to "focus on the result itself not how it is achieved".

While Labour had succeeded in making the NHS as well-funded as the European average, it still produced "some of the worst health outcomes in the whole of Europe", he said, with England near the bottom of the table for five-year cancer survival rates.

Conservative aims would include raising that rate above the EU average by 2015 as well as reducing premature death from stroke, heart and lung disease below the EU average and year-on-year improvement in the well-being of patients with long-term conditions.

Mr Cameron said: "We've got a situation where we pump the same money into our health system as other countries but on the thing that actually matters, a patient's health and the results of their actual treatment, we are doing worse.

"Seriously, if the NHS isn't about improving the health of people, making them live longer, happier and more fulfilling lives, then what is it about?

"This is so typical of Labour, so obsessed with the process that they've lost sight of the bigger and more important picture: making people better."

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