Dr Foster on ITV's Tonight Programme: "How Safe Is Your Hospital?"

(PRLEAP.COM) April 8, 2009 - ITV’s Tonight Programme has revealed that Dr Foster was first to warn about failings at the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital Trust where more patients than would be expected had died unnecessarily.

Watch How Safe Is Your Hospital? here: http://www.itv.com/News/tonight/episodes/Howsafeisyourhospital/default.html

How Safe Is Your Hospital?, which aired March 30 2009 at 8pm, also revealed that the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College had flagged a warning with the Healthcare Commission in July 2007 and again a month later.

The Dr Foster analysis had identified that the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital Trust had the fourth highest Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratio (HSMR) in England for the three-year period 2003 to 2006.

The Healthcare Commission eventually launched a full investigation and a report into failings at the Trust.

Access the Healthcare Commission report here: http://www.healthcarecommission.org.uk/_db/_documents/Investigation_into_Mid_Staffordshire_NHS_Foundation_Trust.pdf

The Tonight Programme criticised the Healthcare Commission for not acting sooner despite warnings.

Other media coverage has also highlighted how the early warnings provided by the Dr Foster Unit and Dr Foster’s 2007 Hospital Guide were not acted upon quickly enough by the Healthcare Commission.

The Dr Foster Unit develops pioneering methodologies that enable fast and accurate identification of potential problems in clinical performance, as well as areas of high achievement.

The Dr Foster Unit was established in 2000 within the Division of Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care, part of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College in London.

Dr Foster also produces consumer guides to health services, the first of which was published in 2001 – The Hospital Guide.

The publication of the Hospital Guide marked the first ever instance that comparative adjusted death rates for all NHS hospital trusts had ever been made public in the UK.

Dr Foster information tools are used by over 70 per cent of the NHS and comparative information for the public is now also published on Dr Foster’s consumer-facing website: www.drfosterhealth.co.uk.

Tim Kelsey, Chair of the Executive Board of Dr Foster Intelligence, stated, "The NHS is now one of the most closely monitored health economies in the world and the alert that triggered the Mid Staffordshire investigation is evidence that this new system is working and that the NHS is beginning to use information and data effectively."

Roger Taylor, Research Director of Dr Foster Intelligence, added: "While mortality rates should never be looked at in isolation, they can provide powerful evidence of where care may be failing. Dr Foster believes this information should be in the public domain and taken seriously by hospitals. In the case of Mid-Staffs, Dr Foster’s published analyses in the Hospital Guide 2007 had raised cause for concern for some years prior to the investigation by the Healthcare Commission."

Derek Butler, the chairman of MRSA Action UK, said: "The [Dr Foster] data which is freely available and in the public domain should be used as a management tool, not only by the Hospital Trust Boards and managers, but also by the regulators."

You can access Dr Foster’s Hospital Guide to find out how your local hospital performs against other hospitals in England.

Find out more about Dr Foster’s Real-Time Monitor tool on the Dr Foster corporate site.

Editors’ Notes

1. HSMRs: Dr Foster publishes HSMRs as one of a basket of quality indicators in its annual Hospital Guide and over www.drfosterhealth.co.uk. Dr Foster has always advised that HSMRs should not be used in isolation in evaluating the quality of a hospital.

2. About Dr Foster: Dr Foster is the UK’s market-leading provider of information, analysis and targeted communications to health and social care organisations. An independent organisation, Dr Foster Intelligence was launched in 2006 as a joint venture between Dr Foster Ltd and the NHS Information Centre for health and social care. Dr Foster Intelligence aims to set a new standard in information for health and social care providers and their users and is legally required to follow a code of conduct that prohibits political bias and requires it to act in the public interest. The Dr Foster Ethics Committee is an independent body empowered to adjudicate on complaints and oversee the code of conduct.

3. About Dr Foster Health: Dr Foster Health is the leading innovator in benchmarking public services and communicating information about services to the public. We produce authoritative and independent guides to health services in the public and private sectors. Our aim is not only to inform, but also to act as a catalyst for change.

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