Thank you for a rare and refreshing touch of realism here about the NHS. It’s a little more complicated than living in the right area, but your broad point is correct. I’m in a similar situation as your wife - I’ve been an NHS patient for all my (longish) life (in fact I’m just a year or two older than the NHS) in many different parts of the country, and have had a range of serious health problems throughout my life: but with one exception I’ve never received anything but excellent care (the one exception was when I broke my nose playing cricket at 14). But I’m not naive enough to suppose that my experience is universal.
There’s plenty of room in the NHS for both excellence and its opposite. The central problem of the NHS is that it’s too large (world’s second or third largets civilian employer, depending on how you count) to be managed consistently.
My wife is in England as I write this, taking advantage of one of the last flights of Flybe into Norwich. They are discontinuing service to that airport in October so after that the nearest airport to her family would be Stanstead, more than double the time it takes to get their home than Norwich. If, God forbid, anything should happen to her while she is visiting I have no doubt that she would receive excellent care from the NHS, just like she and her relatives always have.