Deciding which are the best or worst hospitals in Great Britain comes down to a number of factors. Published each year and accessible by the public is the Dr Foster Hospital Guide with a simple but important aim to help measure hospital performance and to save lives. Here are 2011's worst hospitals as chosen by the Dr Foster Hospital Guide.
To help establish which are the worst hospitals in the UK based on mortality rates alone, four main indicators are used by the Dr Foster Hospital Guide; Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratio (HSMR), Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI), Deaths After Surgery and Deaths in Low-Risk Conditions. Based on these indicators, the University Hospital of North Staffordshire and Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals were proved to be the worst.
There are 19 hospitals trusts which have higher than expected mortality rates based on two of these four measures; HSMR and SHMI. These trusts include Buckingham Healthcare NHS Trust, Medway NHS Foundation Trust, Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust and the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust who, along with the other 15 trusts, scored on average 24% higher than expected SHMI and 15% higher than expected HSMR.
One hospital trust that makes the headlines time-and-time again as Britain's worst is the Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Trust despite a number of other hospital trusts in Britain having the same statistics. The trust's medical director, Dr Paul Kelsey, told the BBC that these Dr Foster reports should be 'treated with caution' as they do not reflect the actual quality of care patients should expect.
Dr Kelsey also goes onto say about the current mortality indicators: "One of our concerns is that the new mortality indicator does not take into account issues such as deprivation and public health issues...The town has higher than average deaths related to alcohol, smoking, IV drug use and heart disease and as the SHMI data [mortality rating] is not adjusted to reflect this our figures will be higher."
To help establish which are the worst hospitals in the UK based on mortality rates alone, four main indicators are used by the Dr Foster Hospital Guide; Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratio (HSMR), Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI), Deaths After Surgery and Deaths in Low-Risk Conditions. Based on these indicators, the University Hospital of North Staffordshire and Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals were proved to be the worst.
There are 19 hospitals trusts which have higher than expected mortality rates based on two of these four measures; HSMR and SHMI. These trusts include Buckingham Healthcare NHS Trust, Medway NHS Foundation Trust, Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust and the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust who, along with the other 15 trusts, scored on average 24% higher than expected SHMI and 15% higher than expected HSMR.
One hospital trust that makes the headlines time-and-time again as Britain's worst is the Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Trust despite a number of other hospital trusts in Britain having the same statistics. The trust's medical director, Dr Paul Kelsey, told the BBC that these Dr Foster reports should be 'treated with caution' as they do not reflect the actual quality of care patients should expect.
Dr Kelsey also goes onto say about the current mortality indicators: "One of our concerns is that the new mortality indicator does not take into account issues such as deprivation and public health issues...The town has higher than average deaths related to alcohol, smoking, IV drug use and heart disease and as the SHMI data [mortality rating] is not adjusted to reflect this our figures will be higher."
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