'High' mortality at five NHS trusts (From Maldon and Burnham Standard)

'High' mortality at five NHS trusts

12:26pm Thursday 7th February 2013 in National News © Press Association 2013

There were 3,000 more deaths than expected at five NHS trusts which are under investigation by NHS bosses for having high mortality rates, figures suggest.

NHS Commissioning Board medical director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh launched the review after the publication of the Francis Report which laid bare the "disaster" of Stafford Hospital. The mortality ratios at the trusts in Lancashire, Essex and Greater Manchester have been "persistently high" between July 2010 and June 2012, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

The Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI), which compares the number of patients who die following admission to hospital with the number who would be expected to die, suggests that 3,063 more people died than expected at the trusts over the two-year period.

The SHMI data, which includes all deaths in hospital as well as deaths occurring 30 days after discharge, shows that there were 879 more deaths than expected at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, 618 at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, 599 more than expected at Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, 508 at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and 459 at Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

However, health experts said the figures are not definitive because the number of "expected deaths" used to calculate the mortality rates could be affected by a number of variables.

Campaigner Julie Bailey, whose 86-year-old mother Bella died at Stafford Hospital in 2007, said that complaints about care in the NHS come in to her organisation Cure the NHS from all over the country.

Miss Bailey told BBC Breakfast: "I can take these complaints down to particular wards within hospitals, they are so frequent, but there's just nobody to help these people, and this is the huge problem that's going on throughout the whole of the country. We know the NHS does some wonderful things but we also know it's doing some awful things to people, and they're our most vulnerable."

The families of those affected, some of whom will be meeting chair of the public inquiry Robert Francis QC in the town on Thursday, have called for NHS chief Sir David Nicholson and Royal College of Nursing (RCN) chief executive Peter Carter to resign following the publication of the report. But Mr Francis refused to point the finger at any organisation or individual, instead blaming an "insidious negative culture".

Lyn Hill-Tout, chief executive at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, apologised for the failure "to keep patients safe" but said Stafford Hospital is a changed place.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said four of the five trusts named as having higher-than-expected death rates are planning to cut jobs, including frontline clinical roles. Across the trusts, with the exception of Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, 1,700 jobs are earmarked to go, a spokesman said