Hospital chiefs question death rate figures

Mid Cheshire Hospital Trust (MCHT) has defended its death rate figures despite being named as one of seven NHS Trusts in the country with higher than expected mortality among its patients.

Figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) show the Mid Cheshire trust, which runs Leighton Hospital, near Crewe, have more patients die in hospital, or within 30 days of discharge, than would be expected on average for England.

But the Trust insists latest death rate figures, to June 2013, are now within the 'as expected' range and that the situation has been improving consistently over the past three years.

A statement from the Trust says an independent external review has concluded that a data recording issue may have caused the figures to spike into the 'higher than expected' category.

The statement added: "The Trust's own calculations indicate that when the data recording issue is addressed, the Trust is once again back in the 'as expected' rating."

"Unfortunately, national figures cannot be rectified retrospectively, so the Trust's rates will appear high for approximately two years due to the time lag with the data."

The Trust is carrying our further independent validation of the data issue and is expected to report further in December.

They are also in talks with the North West's Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) to reduce mortality further with a 'peer review visit' scheduled for January 2014.

The original Care Quality Commission (CQC) report last month revealed 44 trusts out of 161 were highest risk, including having higher than expected death rates across their hospitals.

The CQC looked at 150 indicators of how trusts were doing, including incidents involving patient safety, whistleblowing staff and patient satisfaction with care.

The CQC put England's trusts into six bands, with band 1 being the highest risk and band 6 the lowest; Mid Cheshire Hospital Trust was placed in band 3.

Last April Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was named as one of the best in the country for the second year in a row.

The award was based on 22 key performance indicators covering areas such as safety, clinical effectiveness, health outcomes, efficiency, patient experience and quality of care.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.