Exposed: the hospitals whose high death rates are failing the NHS

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Nineteen hospital trusts are today exposed as having alarmingly high death rates in a major report that also reveals how hundreds of people are dying needlessly because of substandard NHS care.

The Dr Foster hospital guide, which the Observer publishes exclusively today, discloses that tens of thousands of patients were harmed in hospital last year when they developed avoidable blood clots, suffered from obstetric tears during childbirth, had objects left inside them after operations or were not given immediate treatment after a stroke.

The authoritative study also identifies four hospital trusts where an unexpectedly high number of patients died after developing complications following routine operations. It names Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust as the place where patients have the highest risk of dying in these circumstances – 66% above the average. Last year that equated to 33 deaths more than expected there, although it is not possible to say how many of these deaths could have been prevented. Dr Foster says the morttality rate is too high to occur by chance and is a warning sign of potential issues in the quality of care provided.

The Care Quality Commission – the NHS watchdog for England – will now investigate the trust.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/27/hospital-death-rates-nhs-dr-foster

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Right when American health care reform might be stopped in court?

[silverweb]

1. 19 out of how many?

Granted, EVERY hospital should be held to acceptable standards, but it's a given that there will always be some at the bottom of the heap trying to get away with skirting those standards.

How many are we talking about here -- 20%, 5%, or 0.1%?

Is this report a conservative attempt to inflate the issue regarding a handful of deficient institutions for political reasons -- or are these 19 a significant percentile indicating a wide-spread problem?

[L0oniX]

2. If it's your wife or your child the percentage won't matter will it?

[Saokymo]

3. You're both right

No amount is substandard care is acceptable, but no matter how many people are affected the story will be hyped by anti-HCR groups to support their views.

This just sucks all the way around.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Out of 147

Hull shows how hard it is to get agreement on how to measure standards of hospital care. And some trusts do question elements of Dr Foster's methodology. However, the organisation uses methods approved by the government. Now in its 10th year, its annual hospital guide is widely accepted in the NHS to reveal uncomfortable truths. Last year for example, the Care Quality Commission, the NHS watchdog in England, was forced to revise its high opinion of the quality of care at Basildon hospital when Dr Foster's 2009 report – shared exclusively with the Observer – revealed high death rates there and other problems.

Dr Foster's findings are partly based on hospitals' own declarations in a Department of Health-approved questionnaire which it circulates to the 147 acute trusts. This year's latest report contains some good news – and much that is worrying. Among the 147 acute trusts, 19 have high hospital standardised mortality rates (HSMRs), down from 27 last year. In addition, the gap between hospitals with the highest and lowest rates has narrowed; more trusts are complying with patient safety alerts issued by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA); the reporting of errors seems to have improved; and the number of people dying in hospital fell by 7% between 2008-09 and 2009-10.

While experts welcome this, they also warn there is much to be done before NHS safety reaches the right standard. Just 18 months ago the Commons health select committee estimated that 3,500 patients a year in England die because of treatment blunders and another 7,500 suffer serious harm.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/27/nhs-hospitals-dr-foster-report

[silverweb]

6. Thank you.

And that's a 7% improvement, according to the article.

[Hoyt]

5. Sounds acceptable to me if everyone covered and gets same care (but, should keep improving).

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Go right to the source and ask the horse...NHS website has

the report in full. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/11November/Pages/2010-hospital-guide.aspx

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. Don't be deceived. Everything the right-wing, corporatist Governments of the UK of these past

thirty years have changed, has been for the sole purpose of cheapness and/or privatization.

The very unworldly were persuaded to run their own pension funds, when the very suggestion cried out corporatist, government fraud. Needless to say, there has been inordinate litigation as a result of the private insurance and fund managers misselling their wares.

It is claimed that - in this order - these so-called hospital trusts (not in the legal sense) were set up to provide better care and more economic management.

'If it ain't bust, don't fix it!' is the obvious rejoinder, but, of course, they would claim that the very conception of the free NHS was busting the ideal health-service: the previous, private medicine - although the health-insurance companies use NHS facilities and many of the doctors, when it suits them.

It needs to be borne in mind that the setting up of these trusts on the template provided by private corporations was posited on the false premise that the market had a quasi divine mojo in all matters concerning efficiency, and that that paradigm has now been utterly shattered.

Osborne made no secret that he wanted to privatize the NHS, before the coalition came to power.

An enormous proportion of the overall funds that now go into the NHS, and which used to go directly to the provision of medical care, is paid to a whole new, raft of administrators and office staff.