THE NHS safety regime is "fatally flawed", the Tories said yesterday after research found 12 hospitals – including several in Yorkshire – were "significantly underperforming".
Nine of those accused of serious failings had been rated good or excellent by official regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), prompting calls for a public inquiry.
The latest hospital guide from the Dr Foster organisation also identified 27
trusts with unusually high mortality rates – totalling 5,000 more deaths than expected last year.
Trusts ranked lowest by Dr Foster included Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust and Scarborough and North East Yorkshire. Of the total, St Helens and Knowsley had been rated excellent by the CQC and three others – Mid Yorkshire; Scarborough and North East Yorkshire; and Weston – were rated fair.
But chief executive of the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust
Julia Squire defended its record, saying: "Dr Foster is a commercial organisation that has chosen a number of indicators, without consultation, to judge trusts against.
"The way they have used those indicators to band and score trusts is extremely confusing. The banding we have been given doesn't seem to reflect all our actual results.
"People can be confident about the care we offer and our focus on patient safety.
"I am very happy for my family to be cared for at our hospitals and I can recommend our services to local people."
The report said that items such as swabs and drill bits were left inside patients after surgery in at least 209 cases and surgeons operated on the wrong part of a body at least 82 times.
A total of 478 operations were also cancelled in 2008/09 because patient notes were missing.
And 848 of 5,024 people who died after being admitted for "low-risk" conditions were under 65.
Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust director of planning and performance Simon Jones said: "We know that many
of the areas where we were rated weak in 2008/09, we have already started to tackle, and so we know that we will see a much better picture reflected next year."
The CQC insisted yesterday, that some of the Dr Foster data was "flaky".
Health minister Mike O'Brien also questioned the findings and several trusts accused Dr Foster of using incomplete figures which failed to show the true picture.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said last night: "Gordon Brown promised that he would have a 'deep clean' and that all NHS hospitals would be clean and safe. He has failed.''
