THE National Health Service often gets a rough ride. For years commentators have insisted our doctors' surgeries and hospitals are dying a slow death.

Other critics hit out at the amount of bureaucracy in our health service, and the pressures to meet government-set targets, which they say are strangling our health professionals.

Latest figures show our regions' doctors are outperforming three quarters of the country's GPs.

Cumbria and Lancashire is ranked seven out of 28 strategic health authorities based on its GPs' overall Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) point scores.

Criteria includes how GPs are tackling 11 chronic diseases ranging from epilepsy to diabetes; the speed and appropriateness of treatment; waiting times; clinical care; organisation; patient experience; and the overall quality of the practice.

And the news that Lancashire is ranked so highly in the figures - published for the first time this year - has been welcomed by primary care trust officials, which fund the surgeries as the scores are used to work out how much funding should be allocated.

This inevitably leads to suggestions that surgeries and PCTs massage figures to boost their own funding.

But the basic fact remains that our health service is improving and in East Lancashire we can boast some of the best GP practices in the country.

A reliance on performance figures and league tables have received so much opposition by people both inside and outside the health service. But those figures have an important role - they are helping to rebuild confidence in our much-maligned NHS.