Dispute over NHS hospital ratings

Twelve NHS hospital trusts in England are "significantly underperforming", a report has said, despite many recently having been rated good or excellent.

The report by monitoring body Dr Foster also said 27 trusts had unusually high death rates.

But the Care Quality Commission, which has issued its official ratings within the past month, said it saw no need to intervene to make improvements.

Its chairwoman said Dr Foster’s data was part alarmist, part legitimate.

On Thursday, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) sent a task force into Basildon and Thurrock NHS Trust in Essex after it uncovered major lapses in hygiene and unusually high death rates.

Just 24 hours later, the chairman of Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust was sacked after inspectors found it had consistently failed to improve waiting times and had death rates 12% higher than expected.

Variations in care

The part-private, part-NHS Dr Foster Hospital Guide rates hospital trusts from one to five based on analysis of a range of "safety indicators", including errors in surgery, deaths, infection rates and staffing levels.

In this year’s report 12 received the lowest score.

They include University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire; Weston Area Health Trust; South London Healthcare Trust; Tameside Hospital Foundation Trust; University Hospital of South Manchester and St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals Trust.

Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust; Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospitals Foundation Trust; and Hereford Hospitals Trust are also among the 12, which is completed by Basildon and Thurrock; Lewisham; and Scarborough and North East Yorkshire.

Overall, the report said hospital death rates in England had fallen by 7%, but quality of care continued to vary greatly across the country.

It cited more than 200 cases where items such as swabs had been left inside patients’ bodies after surgery and more than 5,000 instances where people who were admitted with low-risk conditions died in hospital.

Roger Taylor, director of Dr Foster, said: "No hospital in the world would claim to be free of these kinds of errors, but what has been learned over the years is that recording what is happening, and making that information generally public, is the best way to start tackling the issues."

‘Quite alarmist’

On Friday, in the wake of events at Basildon and Colchester, Health Secretary Andy Burnham ordered an urgent review by regulators to find out whether any other trusts required "immediate investigation".

LOWEST RATED TRUSTS

• Coventry and Warwickshire
• Weston Area
• South London
• Tameside
• South Manchester
• St Helens and Knowsley
• Mid Yorkshire
• Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre
• Hereford
• Basildon and Thurrock
• Lewisham
• Scarborough and North East Yorkshire

In response, the CQC said it was monitoring a small number of hospitals, but had "no evidence that there is another trust in England where we would take action of the kind we have taken at Basildon".

Baroness Young, head of the CQC, told the BBC that some of Dr Foster’s data was "very legitimate", but some was "quite alarmist".

"But where they are good we will take them to account in our regulatory work and where they are flaky, we won’t," she added.

A Department of Health spokesman said the CQC would "keep the situation under close review and report back to the health secretary with any further concerns".

He said: "We have made real improvements in recent years and England is recognised as one of the world leaders in the international drive to improve the safety of healthcare.

"The vast majority of patients experience high quality, safe and effective care and the CQC’s recent survey showed that 93% of patients rate their overall care as good or excellent." </p

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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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