Hospital death rates among UK's highest

The Dr Foster Hospital Guide published this week flagged up the East Sussex Hospitals Trust as one of 19 trusts with higher than expected death rates. The guide compares all 147 trusts in the UK and takes into account the type of patients being treated.

The trust’s death rate has got worse since last year and though authors of the report said it could be down to “unusual circumstances,” they said it should be investigated.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “Safety is still clearly not the top priority of every NHS organisation and it absolutely should be. We are deeply concerned by the high number of adverse events and the wide variation of mortality ratios that this report highlights.

“This report provides more evidence if more were needed that we are still living in a postcode lottery of care. Best practice exists so why can it not be shared across the NHS? How many reports do we have to have before the appropriate action is taken? Improvements have been made but it is clear that we have a lot more work to do before healthcare inequalities are rooted out of the NHS for good.”

The report also revealed that although deaths after surgery in the trust were “in line with expectations”, it was towards the top end of this band.

A spokesman for the East Sussex Hospitals Trust said the Dr Foster research was used along with other indicators to assess death rates at the trust, and he moved to allay patients’ fears.

He said: “On November 24 the trust board received a report on mortality rates following a recent detailed clinical audit. The outcomes of the audit did not demonstrate any concerns about the quality of care received by our patients but did identify a number of areas for improvement including in end-of-life care.

“The board received details of the actions already underway to address these areas. We can therefore assure our patients that we are confident that our standards of care and treatment compare well with other local hospitals. We are committed to continued quality improvements.”

Elsewhere in the report the trust recorded some better results than last year, with only one “foreign object” left in a patient’s body after surgery compared to seven last year. The East Sussex Hospitals Trust also runs the District General Hospital in Eastbourne, but individual hospital breakdowns are not available.