Airedale Hospital

Monitoring body Dr Foster Hospital Guide has controversially named 12 hospital trusts in England as “significantly under performing”, despite eight recently being named as good or excellent by the Care Quality Commission.

The same report however has placed Airedale Hospital as one of 14 best hospitals in England and the only one in Yorkshire and Humberside to achieve a top band five rating for patient safety.

The guide has come up with the hierarchy by analysing a range of criteria for patient safety, such as readmission rates, scans and equipment, end of life care and — for the first time — mortality rates for low-risk conditions such as hernias and tonsillectomies.

This year each hospital was assessed across 13 categories taking in safety, efficiency and effectiveness, given a score from 0-100 and placed in one of five bands where one is the worst and five is the best. Airedale scored 91.78 and was put in band five.

Adam Cairns, chief executive of Airedale NHS Trust, described the rating as “fantastic news”.

He said: “This achievement reflects the continuous hard work of all the trust’s staff, whose commitment to our patients has made a real contribution to the quality and safety of healthcare we provide and acknowledges the excellent results we achieve for our patients.

“At Airedale Hospital we are determined to put patients at the heart of everything we do and nothing signifies overall care of the highest quality more than a consistently low hospital mortality ratio.

The part-private, part-NHS Dr Foster Hospital Guide was originally published to encourage greater transparency about healthcare performance. However some hospitals have responded to the report by branding it “extremely confusing” and “grossly misleading”.