1:11pm Monday 30th November 2009
By St Helens Star newsdesk
A SENIOR doctor has attacked a research group’s report that claims St Helens and Whiston hospitals are being run by “one of 12 underperforming NHS Trusts in England”.
St Helens and Knowsley NHS Hospitals Trust was given a dreadfully low score by the part-private, part-NHS Dr Foster Hospital Guide, which assesses patient safety.
The guide states it gives ratings based on analysis of a range of "safety indicators", including errors in surgery, deaths, infection rates and staffing levels.
Earlier this year, the local hospitals trust was again rated excellent by the Care Quality Commission but the Dr Foster review offers a stark contrast.
The findings were seized upon by the Conservative party politicians who claimed “there needs to be a massive overhaul in the way that the inspection regime is working”.
However, the report’s criticisms drew a strongly worded response from Dr Mike Lynch, medical director at St Helens and Whiston Hospitals.
Dr Lynch said: “I am astonished that Dr Foster has chosen to misrepresent data in this way.
“The Trust has a very strong track record on patient safety and has been rated as ‘Double Excellent’ for two consecutive years by the Care Quality Commission.
“The positive data on patient safety that the Trust submitted was incorrectly excluded from this assessment.
“This is the only basis that Dr Foster had to categorise the Trust in this way.”
Dr Lynch claimed the report creates “unnecessary worries for patients” before adding that a number of hospitals are considering taking legal action.
He added: “Our staff do a fantastic job and do not deserve this unwarranted criticism and our patients can rest assured that their safety is at the very top of the Trust’s Board Agenda.”
Eight of the 12 so called poorly performing hospitals had been rated as good or excellent by the CQC, the NHS’s regulator.
This prompted Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley call for a change in the inspection regime.
He said: "We have to move away from the flawed system of self assessment to one where inspectors really understand what is going on in our hospitals.
“We need more spot inspections which focus on the results of treatment, the experiences of patients and their feedback.”
He argued the “inspectorate needed to be given teeth” so a range of options can be taken against hospitals not meeting standards.
And he claimed a Tory Government would stop focusing on “top-down targets and instead focus relentlessly on the thing that matters to patients – results”.
Roger Taylor, director of Dr Foster, said: “Dr Foster in partnership with Imperial College London has been analysing and publishing mortality data for almost a decade and the methodology has been extensively peer reviewed in academic journals.
“HSMRs are published by the Government on the NHS Choices website and used by many leading healthcare organisations around the world.
“The measure of deaths in low mortality conditions is based on the methodology developed by the Association for Healthcare Research and Quality in the US, a recognised leader in the field of patient safety metrics “Both indicators should not be used in isolation but can help identify where issues of concern may exist.”
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