THE picture for patients in North Yorkshire looks relatively healthy, despite the appearance of a north-south divide in NHS league tables for England which have been released today.

According to NHS performance indicators for England the county has one of the lowest figures for deaths from all causes for people aged 15 to 64, it scores well for the number of emergency patients seen within two hours at A & E, and has a high level of GPs for its population.

But North Yorkshire scores higher than average in terms of suicides and deaths from accidents.

Professor Mark Baker, medical director of North Yorkshire Health Authority, said though the accident death rate was high it was improving rapidly.

On the overall figures he said: "It's certainly a better than average performance, but there is still a lot of scope for improvement right across the board."

The area "where we have seriously failed" was in cancer outpatient waiting times. "If we are still an outlier next year we will have failed," he said.

He would be initiating a debate in the health authority on action to improve performance where required.

George Wood, deputy chief executive of the York Health Trust, said the indicators showed it to be mainly in the "mid range" of services for hospitals of the same type.

The exception was in emergency re-admissions, due to the way users of the early pregnancy advisory day service were counted. That had been changed and the trust would now fall into the mid range for that heading as well.

He added: "Clinical services in York do continue to be under a lot of pressure, however, the performance indicators do not highlight any serious concerns on any aspects of the quality of services that they measure."

PICTURE: George Wood