Hospital’s ‘consistently high’ mortality rate under investigation

NHS England and local system leaders are investigating “consistently high” mortality rates over the last two years at an acute hospital after previous reviews failed to find an explanation, an integrated care board meeting was told this week.

A Lincolnshire integrated care board member said previous work had “never got to the bottom” of what is happening at Peterborough City Hospital, which sits outside Lincolnshire but provides services to the county’s residents.

Gerry McSorley, who chaired the predecessor clinical commissioning group and is now a non executive director on the ICB, said the problems at Peterborough were “masked” by better mortality rates at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, which is run by the same trust. He added that the concerns around the hospital’s summary hospital-level mortality indicator ration were also being looked into by NHS England.

However, after publication of the story, NWAFT told HSJ: “Following an internal review we found the variance in mortality rates between our two main acute sites… is down to clinical coding variation and in no way reflects the safety or quality of care provided to patients”.

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Source: HSJ, 29 September 2022