Is NHS competition good for patients?: it depends on who's competing

Last year, my research with Zack Cooper on hospital competition generated a lot of interest. In that work we found that reforms in 2006, which allowed patients to choose between NHS hospitals for routine surgery, had knock-on effects on outcomes in emergency care – lower heart attack mortality rates specifically. A lot of people – those with distaste for the very idea of competition in public services – did not like this finding at all and the arguments ran for some time in the medical press.