Less than half of eligible people received NHS ‘midlife MOT’ since 2019, says watchdog
Less than half of people over the age of 40 in England are getting the heart health checks they are entitled to, according to the government’s spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office called for a review of how NHS health checks are provided in England, after it found that only 44% of eligible adults attended one in the past five years.
The checks, known as a midlife MOT, were introduced in 2009, to help identify those at higher risk of developing heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and diabetes and offer tailored advice and treatment to help them manage their risk more effectively.
Heart disease is estimated to affect 6.4 million people in England, costing the healthcare system £7.4bn a year and the wider economy an estimated £15.8bn a year. It contributed to a quarter of all deaths in England in 2022. In 2019, NHS England’s long-term plan set a target to prevent 150,000 heart attacks, strokes and dementia cases by 2028-29.
The report, “Progess in preventing cardiovascular disease”, calls on the government to assess whether local authorities are best placed to deliver health checks.
The Department of Health and Social Care should also “set clear targets for the numbers or percentages of the eligible population who should attend health checks, so they are attended and not just offered”, the NAO said. And there should be incentives to ensure those at highest risk of cardiovascular disease, receive their checks.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “Each year thousands of lives are lost to cardiovascular disease, with billions of pounds spent tackling it.
“Health checks can play a crucial role in bringing these numbers down, but the system isn’t working effectively, resulting in not enough people having checks. This is an unsatisfactory basis for delivering an important public health intervention.
“The Department of Health and Social Care needs to address the weaknesses in the current system for targeting and delivering health checks if it is to achieve the preventive effect it wants.”
Source: The Guardian, 13 November 2024