Fewer hospitals given top rating in NHS study

Fewer hospitals are rated as "excellent" and more operations are being cancelled in the National Health Service (NHS) despite an overall improvement in standards, according to performance tables published on Wednesday.

The complex, annual assessment of the health service by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) reveals reductions in waiting times and hospital acquired infections but shows a group of NHS trusts persistently failing to raise their ratings above "weak" or "fair".

There were 63,000 operations cancelled by hospital trusts in England during 2008-09, up from 57,000 in the previous year although more were rearranged for a new date within 28 days. No explanation for the increase was given.

Trusts criticised

A number of trusts were singled out for criticism. Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust was ranked as "double weak" for the quality of its medical care and its poor financial management. The trust is facing a £30 million (Dh180 million) deficit.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust recorded a score of "weak" in the provision of patient services. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has achieved the same low marks for the past three years. The most worrying sign of a potential decline in standards emerges in the acute sector hospitals which provide medical and surgical care where fewer trusts were scored as being "excellent" or "good", down from 77 per cent in the previous year to 70 per cent this year.

The decline was blamed on the failure of many acute hospital trusts to comply with "core" standards, described by one CQC official as "basic minimum standards that should be met across the whole of the NHS". In the acute sector such compliance ratings fell from 69 per cent to 59 per cent over the course of the year.

"Some of these standards seem to be stubbornly difficult to achieve in parts of the NHS," said Gary Needle of the CQC.

"Organisations need to up their game."

Requirements on mandatory training and management of patient records are not being met by more than 10 per cent of all trusts. Inadequate levels of safeguarding children, in the aftermath of the Baby P tragedy, also raised concern.

Of the 392 NHS trusts in England, 37 were rated as excellent for both the quality of their care and their financial management. Among them was Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool which has been marked as "excellent" in patient care for the past four years.